A diacritic is a
glyphA glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
added to a
letterA letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
, or basic glyph. The term derives from the
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
διακριτικός (
diakritikós, "distinguishing").
Diacritic is both an
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
and a
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
, whereas
diacritical is only an
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
. Some diacritical marks, such as the
acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
( ´ ) and
graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
( ` ) are often called
accents. Diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
The main use of diacritics in the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
is to change the sound value of the letter to which they are added. Examples from
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
are the diaeresis in
naïve and
Noël, which show that the vowel with the diaeresis mark is pronounced separately from the preceding
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
; the acute and grave accents, which indicate that a final vowel is to be pronounced, as in
saké and poetic
breathèd, and the
cedillaA cedilla , also known as cedilha or cédille, is a hook added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation.-Origin:...
under the "c" in the borrowed French word
façade, which shows it is pronounced s rather than k. In other Latin alphabets, they may distinguish between
homonymIn linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
s, such as
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
là "there" versus
la "the," which are both pronounced [la]. In Gaelic type, a dot over consonants indicates
lenitionIn linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...
of the consonant in question.
In other alphabetic systems, diacritics may perform other functions. Vowel pointing systems, namely the
ArabicArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
harakatThe Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...
( ـَ, ـُ, ـُ, etc.) and the
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
niqqud ( ַ, ֶ, ִ, ֹ , ֻ, etc.) systems, indicate sounds (vowels and tones) that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The Indic
viramaVirama is a generic term for the diacritic in many Brahmic scripts, including Devanagari and East Nagari, that is used to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter. The name is Sanskrit for "cessation, termination, end"...
( ् etc.) and the Arabic sukūn ( ـْـ ) mark the absence of a vowel. Cantillation marks indicate
prosodyIn linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
. Other uses include the Early Cyrillic
titloTitlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in old Cyrillic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "", "title"...
( ◌҃ ) and the Hebrew
gershayimGershayim , also occasionally grashayim , names two distinct typographical marks in the Hebrew language. The name literally means "double geresh".-Punctuation mark:...
( ״ ), which, respectively, mark
abbreviationAn abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...
s or acronyms, and Greek diacritics, which showed that letters of the alphabet were being used as
numeralsGreek numerals are a system of representing numbers using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Ionian numerals, Milesian numerals , Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals...
.
In
orthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
and
collationCollation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new, distinct letter or as a letter–diacritic combination. This varies from language to language, and may vary from case to case within a language.
In some cases, letters are used as "in-line diacritics" in place of ancillary glyphs, because they modify the sound of the letter preceding them, as in the case of the "h" in English "sh" and "th".
Types
Among the types of diacritic used in alphabets based on the Latin script are:
- accent marks (thus called because the acute, the grave and the circumflex accent were originally used to indicate different types of pitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
s, in the polytonic transcription of GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
)
- – acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
(Latin apexIn written Latin, the apex is a mark roughly with the shape of an acute accent which is placed over vowels to indicate that they are long.The shape and length of the apex can vary, sometimes within a single inscription...
)
- – grave accent
The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
- – circumflex accent (Slovak vokáň)
- – caron
A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...
, inverted circumflex, (Czech háček, Slovak mäkčeň, Slovene strešica, Lakota ičášleče)
- – double acute accent
The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script. It is used primarily in written Hungarian, and consequently is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut, a portmanteau of Hungarian umlaut...
- – double grave accent
The double grave accent is a diacritic used in scholarly discussions of the Serbo-Croatian and sometimes Slovene languages. It is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet....
- dots
- – dot
When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the Interpunct , or to the glyphs 'combining dot above' and 'combining dot below'...
(Indic anusvaraAnusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....
)
- – a dot
When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the Interpunct , or to the glyphs 'combining dot above' and 'combining dot below'...
below is used in Rheinische DokumentaThe Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland....
} –
InterpunctAn interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
-
- tittle
A tittle is a small distinguishing mark, such as a diacritic or the dot on a lowercase i or j. The tittle is an integral part of the glyph of i and j, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages...
, the dot used by default in the modern lowercase form of the Latin letters "i" and "j"
- – trema, diaeresis, or umlaut
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
sign
- – colon
The colon is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.-Usage:A colon informs the reader that what follows the mark proves, explains, or lists elements of what preceded the mark....
, used in the International Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
to mark long vowelsIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
.
- ring
- – ring
A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts.-Ring above:...
(Swedish kål, Czech kroužek as in 'kůl')
- vertical line
- – a vertical line below is used in Rheinische Dokumenta
The Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland....
as a schwaIn linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
mark
- macron or horizontal line
- – macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
(Hawaiian kahakō, Māori tohutō)
- – macron below
Macron below, , is a combining diacritical mark used in various orthographies.It is not to be confused are "combining minus below" [[̠|]] , "combining low line" and "low line" _ ). The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter will result in an unbroken underline when...
- overlays
- – bar
A bar or stroke is a modification consisting of a line drawn through a grapheme. It may be used as a diacritic to derive new letters from old ones, or simply as an addition to make a grapheme more distinct from others....
through the basic letter
- – slash
A bar or stroke is a modification consisting of a line drawn through a grapheme. It may be used as a diacritic to derive new letters from old ones, or simply as an addition to make a grapheme more distinct from others....
through the basic letter
- – stroke
A bar or stroke is a modification consisting of a line drawn through a grapheme. It may be used as a diacritic to derive new letters from old ones, or simply as an addition to make a grapheme more distinct from others....
through the basic letter
- curves
- – breve
A breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
- – sicilicus
In Old Latin a sicilicus is a diacritical mark, , like a laterally inverted C placed above a letter and evidently deriving its name from its shape like a little sickle...
, a palaeographic diacritic similar to a caron or breve
- – tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
- – titlo
Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in old Cyrillic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "", "title"...
- curls above
- – apostrophe
- – hook
In typesetting, the hook is a diacritic mark placed on top of vowels in the Vietnamese alphabet. In shape it looks like a tiny question mark without the dot underneath. For example, a capital A with a hook is "Ả", and a lower case "u" with a hook is "ủ". It functions as a tone marker...
(Vietnamese dấu hỏi)
- – horn
The horn is a diacritic mark attached to the top right corner of the letters o and u in the Vietnamese alphabet to give ơ and ư, unrounded variants of the vowel represented by the basic letter...
(Vietnamese dấu móc)
- curls below
- – comma
- – cedilla
A cedilla , also known as cedilha or cédille, is a hook added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation.-Origin:...
- – ogonek
The ogonek is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.-Use:...
- double marks (over or under two base characters)
- – double breve
The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Ancient Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, or non-spacing as a diacritic...
- – ligature tie
The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Ancient Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, or non-spacing as a diacritic...
- – double circumflex
- – double macron
- – double tilde
The tilde, dot, comma, titlo, apostrophe, bar, and colon are sometimes diacritics, but also have other uses.
Not all diacritics occur adjacent to the letter they modify. In the
Wali language of Ghana, for example, an apostrophe indicates a change of vowel quality, but occurs at the beginning of the word, as in the dialects
’Bulengee and
’Dolimi. Because of
vowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
, all vowels in a word are affected, so the scope of the diacritic is the entire word. In
abugidaAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
scripts, like those used to write
HindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
and
ThaiThai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
, diacritics indicate vowels, and may occur above, below, before, after, or around the consonant letter they modify.
The dot on the letter
i of the Latin alphabet originated as a diacritic to clearly distinguish
i from the vertical strokes of the adjacent letters. It first appeared in the sequence
ii (as in
ingeníí) in Latin manuscripts of the 11th century, then spread to
i adjacent to
m, n, u, and later spread to all lower-case
i. The
j, which separated from the
i later, inherited the "dot". The shape of the diacritic developed from initially resembling today's acute accent to a long flourish by the 15th century. With the advent of
Roman typeIn typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 1400s, based on the pairing of inscriptional capitals used in ancient Rome with Carolingian minuscules developed in the...
it was reduced to the round dot we have today.
Arabic
- (ئ ؤ إ أ and stand alone ء) : indicates a glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
.
- (ــًــٍــٌـ) (تنوين) symbols: Serve a grammatical role in Arabic
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
. The sign ـً is most commonly written in combination with alifALIF may be an abbreviation for:* Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion, a type of spinal fusionAlif may have more than one meaning:* Aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets* Alif, the eighth consonant of the Thaana abugaida used in Dhivehi...
, e.g. ـًا.
- (ــّـ) : Gemination (doubling) of consonants.
- (ٱ) : Comes most commonly at the beginning of a word. Indicates a type of hamza that is pronounced only when the letter is read at the beginning of the talk.
- (آ) : A written replacement for a hamza that is followed by an alif
ALIF may be an abbreviation for:* Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion, a type of spinal fusionAlif may have more than one meaning:* Aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets* Alif, the eighth consonant of the Thaana abugaida used in Dhivehi...
, i.e. (ءا). Read as a glottal stop followed by a long /aː/, e.g. ءاداب، ءاية، قرءان، مرءاة are written out respectivially as آداب، آية، قرآن، مرآة. This writing rule does not apply when the alifALIF may be an abbreviation for:* Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion, a type of spinal fusionAlif may have more than one meaning:* Aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets* Alif, the eighth consonant of the Thaana abugaida used in Dhivehi...
that follows a hamza is not a part of the stem of the word, e.g. نتوءات is not written out as نتوآت as the stem نتوء does not have an alifALIF may be an abbreviation for:* Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion, a type of spinal fusionAlif may have more than one meaning:* Aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets* Alif, the eighth consonant of the Thaana abugaida used in Dhivehi...
that follows its hamza.
- (ــٰـ) superscript alif (also "short" or "dagger alif": A replacement for an original alif that is dropped in the writing out of some rare words, e.g. لاكن is not written out with the original alif
ALIF may be an abbreviation for:* Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion, a type of spinal fusionAlif may have more than one meaning:* Aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets* Alif, the eighth consonant of the Thaana abugaida used in Dhivehi...
found in the word pronunciation, instead it is written out as لٰكن.
- (In Arabic: حركات also called تشكيل tashkīl):
- (ــَـ) (a)
- (ــِـ) (i)
- (ــُـ) (u)
- (ــْـ) (no vowel)
- The or vowel points serve two purposes:
- They serve as a phonetical guide. They indicate the presence of short vowels or their absence
- At the last letter of a word, the vowel point reflects the inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
case or conjugation mood.
- For nouns, The is for the nominative, for the accusative, and for the genitive.
- For verbs, the is for the imperfective, for the perfective, and the is for verbs in the imperative or jussive moods.
- Vowel points or should not be confused with consonant points or (إعجام) – one, two or three dots written above or below a consonant to distinguish between letters of the same or similar form
Rasm is an Arabic term that signifies: drawing, sketch, trace, graph, pictures, outline, pattern, mark, notes, design, regulation, form, rate...
.
Greek
These diacritics are used in addition to the acute, grave, and circumflex accents and the diaeresis: –
iota subscriptIota subscript in Greek polytonic orthography is a way of writing the letter iota as a small vertical stroke beneath a vowel. It was used in the so-called "long diphthongs" in Ancient Greek, that is, diphthongs the first part of which is a long vowel: and...
– rough breathing (
spiritus asper): aspiration – smooth (or soft) breathing (
spiritus lenis): lack of aspiration
Hebrew
- Niqqud
- ( ּ ) Dagesh
- ( ּ ) Mappiq
- ( ֿ ) Rafe
- ( ׁ ) Shin dot (at top right corner)
- ( ׂ ) Sin dot (at top left corner)
- ( ְ ) Shva
Shva or, in Biblical Hebrew, Sh'wa is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots "ְ" underneath a letter. In Modern Hebrew, it indicates either the phoneme or the complete absence of a vowel , whereas in Hebrew prescriptive linguistics, four grammatical entities are differentiated:...
- ( ֻ ) Kubutz
- ( ֹ ) Holam
- ( ָ ) Kamatz
- ( ַ ) Patakh
- ( ֶ ) Segol
- ( ֵ ) Tzeire
- ( ִ ) Hiriq
- Cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...
marks do not generally render correctly; refer to Cantillation#Names and shapes of the ta'amim for a complete table together with instructions for how to maximize the possibility of viewing them in a web browser
- Other
- ( ׳ ) Geresh
Geresh is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.#An apostrophe-like sign placed after a letter :...
- ( ״ ) Gershayim
Gershayim , also occasionally grashayim , names two distinct typographical marks in the Hebrew language. The name literally means "double geresh".-Punctuation mark:...
Korean
These diacritics, known as Bangjeom (방점;傍點), were used to mark pitch accents in
HangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
for Middle Korean. It is written to the left of a character in vertical writing and above a character in horizontal writing.
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial Unicode MS">〮, 〯
Non-alphabetic scripts
Some non-alphabetic scripts also employ symbols that function essentially as diacritics.
- Non-pure abjad
An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
s (such as HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and ArabicArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
script) and abugidaAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
s use diacritics for denoting vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s. Hebrew and Arabic also indicate consonant doubling and change with diacritics; Hebrew and DevanagariDevanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
use them for foreign sounds. Devanagari and related abugidas also use a diacritical mark called a viramaVirama is a generic term for the diacritic in many Brahmic scripts, including Devanagari and East Nagari, that is used to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter. The name is Sanskrit for "cessation, termination, end"...
to mark the absence of a vowel. In addition, Devanagari uses the moon-dot chandrabinduChandrabindu is a diacritic sign having the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari , Bengali , Gujarati , Oriya and Telugu scripts.It usually means that the previous vowel is nasalized...
( ँ ).
- The Japanese hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
and katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
syllabariesA syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
use the dakuten (◌゛) and handakuten (◌゜), colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...
(in Japanese: 濁点 and 半濁点) symbols, also known as nigori (濁) or ten-ten (点々) and maru (丸), to indicate voiced consonants or other phonetical changes.
- Emoticons are commonly created with diacritic symbols, especially Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese emoticons on popular imageboards.
Alphabetization or collation
Different languages use different rules to put diacritic characters in
alphabetAn alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
ical order. French treats letters with diacritical marks the same as the underlying letter for purposes of ordering and dictionaries.
The Scandinavian languages, by contrast, treat the characters with diacritics
ä,
ö and
å as new and separate letters of the alphabet, and sort them after
z. Usually
ä is sorted as equal to
æ (ash) and
ö is sorted as equal to
ø (o-slash). Also,
aa, when used as an alternative spelling to
å, is sorted as such. Other letters modified by diacritics are treated as variants of the underlying letter, with the exception that
ü is frequently sorted as
y.
Languages that treat accented letters as variants of the underlying letter usually alphabetize words with such symbols immediately after similar unmarked words. For instance, in German where two words differ only by an umlaut, the word without it is sorted first in German dictionaries (e.g.
schon and then
schön, or
fallen and then
fällen). However, when names are concerned (e.g. in phone books or in author catalogues in libraries), umlauts are often treated as combinations of the vowel with a suffixed
e; Austrian phone books now treat characters with umlauts as separate letters (immediately following the underlying vowel).
In Spanish, the grapheme
ñ is considered a new letter different from
n and collated between
n and
o, as it denotes a different sound from that of a plain
n. But the accented vowels
á,
é,
í,
ó,
ú are not separated from the unaccented vowels
a,
e,
i,
o,
u, as the acute accent in Spanish only modifies
stressIn linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
within the word or denotes a distinction between
homonymIn linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
s, and does not modify the sound of a letter.
For a comprehensive list of the collating orders in various languages, see
Collating sequenceThe term collating sequence refers to the order in which individual characters should be taken when sorting a collection of character strings using dictionary order. This article is concerned with the order of the alphabetical characters comprising variants of the Latin alphabet in various languages...
.
Generation with computers
Modern computer technology was developed mostly in the English-speaking countries, so data formats, keyboard layouts, etc. were developed with a bias favoring English, a language with an alphabet without diacritical marks. This has led to fears internationally that the marks and accents may be made obsolete to facilitate the worldwide exchange of data. Efforts have been made to create internationalized domain names that further extend the English alphabet (e.g., "pokémon.com").
Depending on the
keyboard layoutA keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
, which differs amongst countries, it is more or less easy to enter letters with diacritics on computers and typewriters. Some have their own keys; some are created by first pressing the key with the diacritic mark followed by the letter to place it on. Such a key is sometimes referred to as a
dead keyA dead key is a special kind of a modifier key on a typewriter or computer keyboard that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a character by itself but modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after...
, as it produces no output of its own, but modifies the output of the key pressed after it.
In modern Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems, the keyboard layouts
US International and
UK International feature
dead keyA dead key is a special kind of a modifier key on a typewriter or computer keyboard that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a character by itself but modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after...
s that allow one to type Latin letters with the acute, grave, circumflex, diæresis, tilde, and cedilla found in Western European languages (specifically, those combinations found in the ISO Latin-1 character set) directly:
"+e gives
ë,
~+o gives
õ, etc. On Apple Macintosh computers, there are keyboard shortcuts for the most common diacritics; Option-
e followed by a vowel places an acute accent, Option-
u followed by a vowel gives an umlaut, option-
c gives a cedilla, etc. Diacritics can be
composeA compose key, available on some computer keyboards, is a special kind of modifier key designated to signal the software to interpret the following sequence of two keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found directly on the keyboard...
d in most
X Window SystemThe X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
keyboard layouts, as well as other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, using additional software.
On computers, the availability of
code pageCode page is another term for character encoding. It consists of a table of values that describes the character set for a particular language. The term code page originated from IBM's EBCDIC-based mainframe systems, but many vendors use this term including Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle Corporation...
s determines whether one can use certain diacritics.
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
solves this problem by assigning every known character its own code; if this code is known, most modern computer systems provide a method to input it. With Unicode, it is also possible to combine diacritical marks with most characters.
Languages with letters containing diacritics
The following languages have letters that contain diacritics that are considered independent letters distinct from those without diacritics.
Germanic
- Faroese
The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin alphabet:- See also :* Alphabets derived from the Latin* Icelandic alphabet* Faroese language* Faroese orthography* Danish and Norwegian alphabet...
uses acute accentThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
s and other special letters. All are considered separate letters and have their own place in the alphabet: áis a letter of the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Slovak and Sámi languages. This letter also appears in Dutch, Galician, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Lakota, Navajo, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter “a”. Some writers use á incorrectly to denote a quantity, often used on...
, íis a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, and Tatar languages. This letter also appears in Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Leonese, Navajo, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “i”....
, óis a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes...
, úÚ or ú is a Latin letter used in the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Slovak writing systems. This letter also appears in Dutch, Irish, Occitan, Pinyin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter "U"....
, ýY is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound...
, and ø.
- Icelandic
The modern Icelandic alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:It is a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth Ðð and the runic letter thorn Þþ...
uses acute accents and other special letters. All are considered separate letters, and have their own place in the alphabet: á, éis a letter of the Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Slovak, and Catalan, Danish, English, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter “e”...
, í, ó, ú, ý, and ö"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
.
- Danish and Norwegian
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
uses additional characters like the o-slash øØ — minuscule: "ø", is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Southern Sami languages.It's mostly used as a representation of mid front rounded vowels, such as ø œ, except for Southern Sami where it's used as an [oe] diphtong.The name of this letter is the same as the sound...
and the a-circle åÅ represents various sounds in several languages. Å is part of the alphabets used for the Alemannic and the Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German...
. These letters are collated after z and æÆ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
, in the order ø, å. Historically the å has developed from a ligature by writing a small a on top of the letter a; if an å character is unavailable, some Scandinavian languages allow the substitution of a doubled a. The Scandinavian languages collate these letters after z, but have different collationCollation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
standards.
- Swedish
Modern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....
uses characters identical to a-umlaut (ä"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
) and o-umlaut (ö"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
) in the place of ash and o-slash in addition to the a-circle (å). Historically the umlaut for the Swedish letters ä and ö, like the German umlaut, has developed from a small gothic e written on top of the letters. These letters are collated after z, in the order å, ä, ö.
Celtic
- Irish
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
uses acute accents, called fadas. Fadas are used to indicate vowel length. These are the following vowels á, é, í, ó, ú.
- Welsh
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
uses the circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
, diaeresis, acute and grave accentThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
s on its seven vowels a, e, i, o, u, w, y.
- Following orthographic reforms since the 1970s, Scottish Gaelic uses grave accents only, which can be used on any vowel (à
is a letter of the Catalan, French, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and Vietnamese languages, consisting of the Latin letter A and a grave accent. À is also used in Pinyin transliteration. In most languages, it represents the vowel a. This letter is also a letter in Taos.When...
, èor can be*The letter E with a Grave accent.*In Shakespeare's works, è would be used in the -ed suffix to indicate alternate pronunciation, for example with winged/wingèd, the è would be added to produce a pronunciation of instead of ....
, ìÌ is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Ukrainian transliteration as the Cyrillic letter І.In the Pinyin system of Chinese romanization, ì is an i with a falling tone.This appears in Catalan, Galician, Italian, Taos, and Vietnamese. Also Alcozauca Mixtec....
, òis a letter in the Kashubian language. This letter also appears in Catalan, Italian, Occitan, Scottish Gaelic, Taos, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “o”.-Character mappings:-External links:***...
, ùU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
). Formerly acute accents could be used on á, ó and é, which were used to indicate a specific vowel quality. With the elimination of these accents, the new orthography relies on the reader having prior knowledge of pronunciation of a given word.
- Manx
Manx , also known as Manx Gaelic, and as the Manks language, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, historically spoken by the Manx people. Only a small minority of the Island's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it...
uses the single diacritic çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
combined with h to give the digraph <çh> to mark the distinction between it and the digraph . Other diacritics used in Manx included â, ê, ï, etc. to mark the distinction between two similarly spelled words but with slightly differing pronunciation.
- Some orthographies of Cornish
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
such as Kernowek StandardKernowek Standard is a variety of revived Cornish and a proposed set of revisions to the Standard Written Form. Developed gradually by a group called UdnFormScrefys , it was published as a proposal in a series of revisions. Its principal authors were Michael Everson, Neil Kennedy, and Nicholas...
and Unified CornishUnified Cornish is a variety of revived Cornish. Developed gradually by Morton Nance during and before the 1930s, it derived its name from its standardisation of the variant spellings of traditional Cornish MSS...
use diacritics, while others such as Kernewek KemmynKernewek Kemmyn is a variety of the revived Cornish language.Kernewek Kemmyn was developed, mainly by Ken George, from Unified Cornish in 1986. It takes much of its inspiration from medieval sources, particularly Cornish passion plays, as well as Breton and to a lesser extent Welsh...
and the Standard Written FormThe Standard Written Form or SWF of the Cornish language is an orthography standard that is designed to "provide public bodies and the educational system with a universally acceptable, inclusive, and neutral orthography"...
do not.
Romance
- Asturian
Asturian is a Romance language of the West Iberian group, Astur-Leonese Subgroup, spoken in the Spanish Region of Asturias by the Asturian people...
, GalicianGalician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
and Spanish, the character ñÑ is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet, formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet, Aragonese old alphabet , Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet and the Guarani alphabet, where it represents...
is a letter and collated between n and o
- Asturian
Asturian is a Romance language of the West Iberian group, Astur-Leonese Subgroup, spoken in the Spanish Region of Asturias by the Asturian people...
uses ḶŁ or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...
(lower case ḷŁ or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...
), and ḤH .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
(lower case ḥH .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
)
- Leonese
The Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...
: could use ñÑ is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet, formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet, Aragonese old alphabet , Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet and the Guarani alphabet, where it represents...
or nn.
- Romanian
The Romanian alphabet is a modification of the Latin alphabet and consists of 31 letters:The letters Q , W , and Y were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982, although they had been used earlier...
uses a breveA breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
on the letter a (ăA is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
) to indicate the sound schwaIn linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
/ə/, as well as a circumflex over the letters a (âis a letter of the Friulian, Romanian, Vietnamese, French, Galician, Portuguese, Frisian, Welsh, Turkish, and Walloon alphabets.- Croatian and Serbian :...
) and i (îis a letter in the Friulian, Kurdish, and Romanian alphabets. This letter also appears in French, Welsh and Walon language as a variant of letter “i”.- Afrikaans :...
) for the sound /ɨ/. Romanian also writes a commaA comma is a type of punctuation mark . The word comes from the Greek komma , which means something cut off or a short clause.Comma may also refer to:* Comma , a type of interval in music theory...
below the letters s () and t () to represent the sounds /ʃ/ and /t͡s/, respectively. These characters are collated after their non-diacritic equivalent.
Slavic
- Bosnian, Croatian
Gaj's Latin alphabet is a variant of the Latin script used for Croatian language. It was devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835, based on Jan Hus's Czech alphabet....
, and SerbianSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
latin alphabet have the symbols čĈ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
, ćĈ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
, đ, šThe grapheme Š, š is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar fricative. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this sound is denoted with , but the lowercase š is used in the Americanist phonetic notation, as well as in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.For use in computer...
and žThe grapheme Ž is formed from Latin Z with the addition of caron . It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative, a sound similar to English g in mirage, or Portuguese and French j...
, which are considered separate letters and are listed as such in dictionaries and other contexts in which words are listed according to alphabetical order. Bosnian and CroatianGaj's Latin alphabet is a variant of the Latin script used for Croatian language. It was devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835, based on Jan Hus's Czech alphabet....
also have one digraphA digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
including a diacritic, džDž is the seventh letter of the Croatian and Bosnian alphabets, and the Latin forms of Serbian, Montenegrin and Macedonian, after D and before Đ. It is pronounced . Dž is a digraph that corresponds to the letter Dzhe of the Cyrillic alphabet used for writing the Serbian, Montenegrin and...
, which is also alphabetised independently, and follows dD is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the...
and precedes đ in the alphabetical order. The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet has no diacritics.
- The Czech alphabet
The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin script, used when writing Czech. Its basic principles are "one sound, one letter" and the addition of diacritical marks above letters to represent sounds alien to Latin...
contains 27 graphemes (letters) when written without diacritics and 42 graphemes when written including them. Czech uses the acute (á é í ó ú ý), caron (čĈ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
ďD is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the...
ěE is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
ňN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
řR is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R...
šThe grapheme Š, š is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar fricative. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this sound is denoted with , but the lowercase š is used in the Americanist phonetic notation, as well as in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.For use in computer...
ťT is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...
žThe grapheme Ž is formed from Latin Z with the addition of caron . It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative, a sound similar to English g in mirage, or Portuguese and French j...
), and for one letter (ůU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
) the ring.
- Polish
The Polish alphabet is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography . It is based on the Latin alphabet, but includes certain letters with diacritics: the line or kreska, which is graphically similar to an acute accent ; the overdot or kropka ; the tail or...
has the following letters: ąA is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
ćĈ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
ęE is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
ł ńN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
óis a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes...
śS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
źZ is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
żZ is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
. These are considered to be separate letters, each of them is placed in alphabet right after its Latin counterpart (i.e. ą between a and b), ź and ż are placed after z in this order.
- The Slovak alphabet
The Slovak alphabet uses a modification of the Latin alphabet. The modifications include the four diacriticals placed above certain letters. Therefore the Slovak alphabet has 46 graphemes.- Vowels :- Consonants :Notes...
uses the acute (á é í ó ú ý ĺŁ or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...
ŕR is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R...
), caron (č ď ľ ň š ť ž), umlaut (ä) and circumflex accent (ô).
- The Slovene alphabet has the symbols č
Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
, šThe grapheme Š, š is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar fricative. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this sound is denoted with , but the lowercase š is used in the Americanist phonetic notation, as well as in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.For use in computer...
and žThe grapheme Ž is formed from Latin Z with the addition of caron . It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative, a sound similar to English g in mirage, or Portuguese and French j...
, which are considered separate letters and are listed as such in dictionaries and other contexts in which words are listed according to alphabetical order.
Baltic
- Latvian
The Latvian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet and consists of 33 letters. 22 of them are from the Latin alphabet; the remaining 11 are obtained from Latin letters by using diacritic marks...
has the following letters: āA is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
ēE is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
īI is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...
ūU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
ŗR is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R...
ļŁ or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...
ķĶ, ķ is the 17th letter of the Latvian language.In ISO 9, Ķ is the official Latin transliteration of the cyrillic letter Қ.-External links:*...
ņN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
ģG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
š ž č.
- Lithuanian
Lithuanian employs a modified Roman script. It is composed of 32 letters. The collation order presents one surprise: "Y" is moved to occur between I Ogonek and J....
. In general usage, where letters appear with the caronA caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...
(č, š and ž) they are considered as separate letters from c, s or z and collated separately; letters with the ogonekThe ogonek is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.-Use:...
(ąA is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
, ęE is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
, įI is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...
and ųU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
), the macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
(ūU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
) and the superdot (ėE is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...
) are considered as separate letters as well, but not given a unique collation order.
Finno-Ugric
- Estonian
The Estonian alphabet is used for writing the Estonian language and is based on the Latin alphabet, with German influence. As such, the Estonian alphabet has the letters Ä, Ö, and Ü , which represent the vowel sounds , and , respectively...
has a distinct letter õ"Õ", or "õ" is a composition of the Latin letter O with the diacritic mark tilde.The HTML entity is Õ for Õ and õ for õ.-Estonian:...
, which contains a tilde. Estonian "dotted vowels" ä, ö, ü are similar to German, but these are also distinct letters, not like German umlauted letters. All four have their own place in the alphabet, between w and x. Carons in š or ž appear only in foreign proper names and loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s. Also these are distinct letters, placed in the alphabet between s and t.
- Finnish
The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...
uses dotted vowels (ä and ö). As in Swedish and Estonian, these are regarded as individual letters, rather than vowel + umlaut combinations (as happens in German). It also uses the characters å, š and ž in foreign names and loanwords. In the Finnish and Swedish alphabets, å, ä and ö collate as separate letters after z, the others as variants of their base letter.
- Hungarian
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
uses the umlaut, the acute and double acute accent (unique to Hungarian): ö ü, á é í ó ú and ő ű. The acute accent indicates the long form of a vowel (in case of i/í, o/ó, u/ú) while the double acute performs the same function for ö and ü. The acute accent can also indicate a different sound (more open, like in case of a/á, e/é). Both long and short forms of the vowels are listed separately in the Hungarian alphabetThe Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
but members of the pairs a/á, e/é, i/í, o/ó, ö/őO is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a...
, u/ú and ü/űU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
are collated in dictionaries as the same letter.
- Livonian
Livonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. It is a nearly extinct language, with one of its last native speakers having died in February 2009. It is closely related to Estonian...
has the following letters: ā, ä, , , ē, ī, ļ, ņ, ō, , , õ"Õ", or "õ" is a composition of the Latin letter O with the diacritic mark tilde.The HTML entity is Õ for Õ and õ for õ.-Estonian:...
, , ŗ, š, , ū, ž.
Turkic
- Azerbaijani
In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani alphabet refers to a Latin alphabet used for writing the Azerbaijani language. This superseded a previous versions based on Cyrillic and Arabic scripts....
includes the distinct Turkish alphabetThe Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
letters Çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
, ĞG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
, I, İThe Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel...
, Ö"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
, ŞS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
and ÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
.
- Crimean Tatar
The Crimean Tatar language is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria...
includes the distinct Turkish alphabetThe Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
letters Çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
, ĞG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
, I, İThe Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel...
, Ö"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
, ŞS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
and ÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
. Unlike Standard Turkish (but like Cypriot TurkishCypriot Turkish, known locally as Kıbrıs Türkçesi, is a Turkish dialect spoken by Turkish Cypriots.- History :Cypriot Turkish is the vernacular spoken by Turkish Cypriots both in Cyprus and among its diaspora....
), Crimean Tatar also has the letter ÑÑ is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet, formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet, Aragonese old alphabet , Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet and the Guarani alphabet, where it represents...
.
- Gagauz
The modern Gagauz alphabet, used for the Gagauz language, is a 32-letter Latin alphabet modelled on the Turkish alphabet.Previously, Gagauz used the Greek and until 1996 the Cyrillic script.-Letters:...
includes the distinct Turkish alphabetThe Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
letters Çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
, ĞG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
, I, İThe Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel...
, Ö"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
and ÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
. Unlike Turkish, Gagauz also has the letters Ä"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
, Êis a letter in the Friulan, Kurdish and Vietnamese languages. The letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of the letter "e", as well as being used in certain Chinese and Ukrainian transliteration systems.-Afrikaans:Ê is not considered a...
ȘS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
and ȚT is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...
. ȘS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
and ȚT is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...
are derived from the Romanian alphabetThe Romanian alphabet is a modification of the Latin alphabet and consists of 31 letters:The letters Q , W , and Y were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982, although they had been used earlier...
for the same sounds. Sometime the turkish ŞS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
may be used instead.
- Turkish
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
uses a G with a breve (ĞG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
), two letters with an umlaut (Ö"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
and ÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
, representing two rounded front vowels), two letters with a cedilla (Çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
and Ş, representing the affricate /tʃ/ and the fricative /ʃ/), and also possesses a dotted capital İ (and a dotless lowercase ı representing a high unrounded back vowel). In Turkish each of these are separate letters, rather than versions of other letters, where dottedThe Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel...
capital İ and lower case i are the same letter, as are dotless capital I and lowercase ı. TypographicallyIn typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
, Ç and Ş are often rendered with a subdot, as in ; when a hook is used, it tends to have more a comma shape than the usual cedilla. The new AzerbaijaniIn the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani alphabet refers to a Latin alphabet used for writing the Azerbaijani language. This superseded a previous versions based on Cyrillic and Arabic scripts....
, Crimean TatarThe Crimean Tatar language is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria...
, and GagauzThe modern Gagauz alphabet, used for the Gagauz language, is a 32-letter Latin alphabet modelled on the Turkish alphabet.Previously, Gagauz used the Greek and until 1996 the Cyrillic script.-Letters:...
alphabets are based on the Turkish alphabet and its same diacriticized letters, with some additions.
Other
- Albanian
The modern Albanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and consists of 36 letters:Note: The vowels are shown in bold. to the pronunciation of the letters.-History:...
has two special letters Çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
and Ё upper and lowercase. They are placed next to the most similar letters in the alphabet, c and e correspondingly.
- Esperanto has the symbols ŭ
U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
, ĉĈ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...
, ĝG is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...
, ĥH .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
, ĵĴ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
and ŝS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
, which are included in the alphabet, and considered separate letters.
- Hawaiian uses the kahakô (macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
) over vowels, although there is some disagreement over considering them as individual letters. The kahakô over a vowel can completely change the meaning of a word that is spelled the same but without the kahakô.
- Kurdish
The Kurdish language is written either using a variant of the Latin alphabet, according to a system introduced by Jeladet Ali Bedirkhan in 1932 , or using a variant of the Persian alphabet, the so-called Sorani alphabet, named for the city of Soran, Iraq.The Hawar is used in Turkey, Syria and...
uses the symbols Çis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
, Êis a letter in the Friulan, Kurdish and Vietnamese languages. The letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of the letter "e", as well as being used in certain Chinese and Ukrainian transliteration systems.-Afrikaans:Ê is not considered a...
, Îis a letter in the Friulian, Kurdish, and Romanian alphabets. This letter also appears in French, Welsh and Walon language as a variant of letter “i”.- Afrikaans :...
, ŞS is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...
and Ûis a letter of the French, Friulian, Kurdish, and Turkish alphabets. This letter was used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Cyrillic transliteration as the letter Ю and also in Wade-Giles for apical dental unrounded vowel as in tzû, tz'û, ssû, corresponds to present zi, ci, si in Pinyin respectively...
with other 26 standard Latin alphabet symbols.
- Maltese
The Maltese alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet with the addition of some letters with diacritic marks and digraphs. It is used to write the Maltese language. It contains 30 letters: - Las muestras :...
uses a C, G, and Z with a dot over them (Ċ, Ġ, Ż), and also has an H with an extra horizontal bar. For uppercase H, the extra bar is written slightly above the usual bar. For lowercase H, the extra bar is written crossing the vertical, like a t, and not touching the lower part (Ħ, ħ). The above characters are considered separate letters. The letter 'c' without a dot has fallen out of use due to redundancy. 'Ċ' is pronounced like the English 'ch' and 'k' is used as a hard c as in 'cat'. 'Ż' is pronounced just like the english 'Z' as in 'Zebra', while 'Z' is used to make the sound of 'ts' in English (like 'tsunami' or 'maths'). 'Ġ' is used as a hard 'G' like in 'geometry', while the 'G' sounds like a soft 'G' like in 'log'. The digraph 'għ' (called għajn after the ArabicThe Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
letter name ''ʻayn for غ) is considered separate, and sometimes ordered after 'g', whilst in other volumes it is placed between 'n' and 'o' (the Latin letter 'o' originally evolved from the shape of PhoenicianThe Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
''ʻayin, which was traditionally collated after Phoenician nūn).
- Vietnamese
The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ , usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ , is the modern writing system for the Vietnamese language...
uses the horn diacriticThe horn is a diacritic mark attached to the top right corner of the letters o and u in the Vietnamese alphabet to give ơ and ư, unrounded variants of the vowel represented by the basic letter...
for the letters ơ and ư; the circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
for the letters â, ê, and ô; the breveA breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
for the letter ă; and a bar through the letter đ.
- Lakota
Lakota is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages , and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux...
alphabet uses the caronA caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...
for the letters č, ȟ, ǧ, š, and ž. It also uses the acute accentThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
for stressed vowels á, é, í, ó, ú, áŋ, íŋ, úŋ.
Cyrillic alphabetThe Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
s
- Belarusian
The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of the Old Church Slavonic language. The alphabet has existed in its modern form since 1918 and consists of thirty-two letters...
has a letter ў.
- Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian have the letter й
Short I is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.Short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy....
.
- Belarusian and Russian
The Russian alphabet is a form of the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
have the letter ёYo is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Unicode, the letter ⟨Ё⟩ is named CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER IO.It commonly represents the sounds , like the pronunciation of ⟨Yo⟩ in "York"....
. In Russian, this letter is usually replaced in print by еYe is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In some languages this letter is called E.It commonly represents the vowel or , like the pronunciation of ⟨e⟩ in "yes".Ye is romanized using the Latin letter E....
, although it has a different pronunciation. The use of е instead of ё in print does not affect the pronunciation. Ё is still used in children's books and in handwriting, is always used in dictionaries. A minimal pairIn phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
is все (vse, "all" pl.) and всё (vsyo, "everything" n. sg.). In Belarusian the replacement by е is a mistake, in Russian, it is possible to use either е and ё in print in place of ё but the former is more common.
- The Cyrillic Ukrainian alphabet
The Ukrainian alphabet is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine. It is one of the national variations of the Cyrillic script....
has the letters й and ї. Ukrainian Latynka has many more.
- Macedonian
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
has the letters ќKje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used only in the Macedonian alphabet, where it It represents the voiceless palatal plosive , or the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate . Kje is the 24th letter In this alphabet...
and ѓGje is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It is used in Macedonian to represent the voiced palatal plosive or the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate , similar to the pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ in "jet"....
.
- In Bulgarian the possessive pronoun ѝ (ì, "her") is spelled with a grave accent in order to distinguish it from the conjunction и (i, "and").
- The acute accent " ́" above any vowel in Cyrillic alphabets is used in dictionaries, books for children and foreign learners to indicate the word stress, it also can be used for disambiguation of similarly spelled words with different lexical stresses.
Diacritics that do not produce new letters
Non-English languages
The following languages have letter-diacritic combinations that are not considered independent letters.
- Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
uses diaeresis to mark vowels that are pronounced separately and not as one would expect where they occur together, for example voel (to feel) as opposed to voël (bird). The circumflex is used in ê, î, ô and û generally to indicate long close-midA close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...
, as opposed to open-midAn open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...
vowels, for example in the words wêreld (world) and môre (morning, tomorrow). The acute accent is used to add emphasis in the same way as underlining or writing in bold or italics in English, for example Dit is jóú boek (It is your book). The grave accent is used to distinguish between words that are different only in placement of the stress, for example appel (apple) and appèl (appeal) and in a few cases where it makes no difference to the pronunciation but distinguishes between homophones. The two most usual cases of the latter are the in the sayings òf... òf (either... or) and nòg... nòg (neither... nor) to distinguish them from of (or) and nog (again, still).
- Aymara
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
uses a diacritical horn over p, q, t, k, ch.
- Bengali
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
uses different sorts of diacritics, called matra of the elements in set of vowels called the shôrobôrno, for instance, কা is the aakaar or আ-kar of ক.
- Catalan has the following composite characters: à, ç, é, è, í, ï, ó, ò, ú, ü, l·l. The acute and the grave accent indicate stress
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
and vowel height, the cedilla marks the result of a historical palatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
, the diaeresis mark indicates either a hiatusIn phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....
, or that the letter u is pronounced when the graphemes gü, qü are followed by e or i, the interpunctAn interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
(·) distinguishes the different values of ll/l·l.
- Czech
The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin script, used when writing Czech. Its basic principles are "one sound, one letter" and the addition of diacritical marks above letters to represent sounds alien to Latin...
has the acute á, é, í, ó, ú, ý, the caron č, ď, ě, ň, ř, š, ť, ž, and the ring ů.
- Dutch
The modern Dutch alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and is used for the Dutch language. Five letters are vowels and 21 letters are consonants.- History :...
uses the diaeresis. For example in ruïne it means that the u and the i are separately pronounced in their usual way, and not in the way that the combination ui is normally pronounced. Thus it works as a separation sign and not as an indication for an alternative version of the i. Diacritics can be used for emphasis (érg koud for very cold) or for disambiguation between a number of words that are spelled the same when context doesn't indicate the correct meaning (één appel = one apple, een appel = an apple; vóórkomen = to occur, voorkómen = to prevent). Grave and acute accents are used on a very small number of words, mostly loanwords. The ç also appears in some loanwords.
- Faroese
The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin alphabet:- See also :* Alphabets derived from the Latin* Icelandic alphabet* Faroese language* Faroese orthography* Danish and Norwegian alphabet...
. Non-Faroese accented letters are not added to the Faroese alphabet. These include é, ö, ü, å and recently also letters like š, ł, and ć.
- Filipino
The Modern Filipino alphabet , otherwise known as the Filipino alphabet , is the alphabet of the Filipino language, the official national language and one of the two official languages of the Philippines...
has the following composite characters: á, à, â, é, è, ê, í, ì, î, ó, ò, ô, ú, ù, û. The actual use of diacritics for Filipino, however, is rare.
- Finnish
The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...
. Carons in š and ž appear only in foreign proper names and loanwords, but may be substituted with sh or zh if and only if it is technically impossible to produce accented letters in the medium. Contrary to Estonian, š and ž are not considered distinct letters in Finnish.
- French
The French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures.-Letter names:- Diacritics :...
uses the grave accent (accent grave), the acute accent (accent aigu), the circumflex (accent circonflexe), the cedilla (cédille), and the diaeresis (tréma).
- Galician
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
vowels can bear an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) to indicate stress or difference between two otherwise same written words (é, '(he/she) is' vs. e, 'and'), but trema is only used with ï and ü to show diaeresisDiaeresis or dieresis may refer to:* Diaeresis , pronunciation of vowels in a diphthong separately, or the division made in a line of poetry when the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word...
in pronunciation. Only in foreign words Galician may use of another diacritics as ç (widely used in the Middle Age) ê or à.
- German
The modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters.In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc....
uses the three so-called umlauts ä, ö and ü. These diacritics indicate vowel changes. For instance the word Ofen ˈoːfən (English: oven) has the plural Öfen [ˈøːfən] (ovens). The sign originated in a superscript e; a handwritten SütterlinSütterlinschrift , or Sütterlin for short, is the last widely used form of the old German blackletter handwriting . In Germany, the old German cursive script developed in the 16th century, replacing the Gothic handwriting at the same time that bookletters developed into the Fraktur typeface...
e resembles two parallel vertical lines, like an umlaut. In old German texts, we see the letter "Y", when being pronounced [y] written as "ÿ". For example "Babÿlon."
- Hebrew
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
has many various diacritic marks known as niqqud that are used above and below script to represent vowels. These must be distinguished from cantillationCantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...
, which are keys to pronunciation and syntax.
- The International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
uses diacritic symbols and diacritic letters to indicate phonetic features or secondary articulations.
- Irish uses acute accent to indicate that the vowel is long
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
. It is known as síneadh fada (long sign) or simply fada (long) in Irish. Historically, a dot was positioned above certain consonants to signify Séimhiú, however this has largely been replaced by the usage of the letter H, although this dot can still be seen in Gaelic Script.
- Italian
The Italian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used by the Italian language.-Vowels:The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, ⟨a e i o u⟩. Of those, only ⟨a⟩ represents one sound value while each of the others has two...
mainly has the acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
and the graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
(à, è/é, ì, ò/ó, ù), typically to indicate a stressed syllable that would not be stressed under the normal rules of pronunciation but sometimes also to distinguish between words that are otherwise spelled the same way (e.g. "e", and; "è", is). Despite its rare use, Italian ortography allows the circumflex accent (î) too, in two cases: it can be found in old literary context (roughly up to 19th century) to signal a syncope (fêro→fecero, they did), or in modern Italian to signal the contraction of ″-ii″ due to the plural ending -i whereas the root ends with another -i; e.g., s.In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
demonio, p.In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
demonii→demonî; in this case the circumflex also signals that the word intended is not demoni, plural of "demone" by shifting the accent (demònî, "devils"; dèmoni, "demons").
- Lithuanian
Lithuanian employs a modified Roman script. It is composed of 32 letters. The collation order presents one surprise: "Y" is moved to occur between I Ogonek and J....
uses the acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
, graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
and tildeThe tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
in dictionaries to indicate stress types in the language's pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
system.
- Maltese
The Maltese alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet with the addition of some letters with diacritic marks and digraphs. It is used to write the Maltese language. It contains 30 letters: - Las muestras :...
sometimes uses diacritics on some vowels to indicate stress or long vowels, but this is restricted to pronunciation assistance in dictionaries.
- Occitan
The Occitan alphabet consists of the following 23 Latin letters:The letters K, W and Y are considered foreign and are used only in words of foreign origin, incrementally integrated into Occitan, such as whisky, watt, Kenya...
has the following composite characters: á, à, ç, é, è, í, ï, ó, ò, ú, ü, n·h, s·h. The acute and the grave accent indicate stressIn linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
and vowel height, the cedilla marks the result of a historical palatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
, the diaeresis mark indicates either a hiatusIn phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....
, or that the letter u is pronounced when the graphemes gü, qü are followed by e or i, the interpunctAn interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
(·) distinguishes the different values of nh/n·h and sh/s·h.
- Portuguese
The Portuguese alphabet, , consists of the following 23 or 26 Latin letters:In addition, the following characters with diacritics are used: Áá, Ââ, Ãã, Àà, Çç, Éé, Êê, Íí, Óó, Ôô, Õõ, Úú. These are not, however, treated as independent letters in collation, nor do they have entries of their own in...
has the following composite characters: à, á, â, ã, ç, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú. The acute and the circumflex accent indicate stress and vowel height, the grave accent indicates crasis, the tilde represents nasalization, and the cedilla marks the result of a historical palatalization. Portuguese has also made use of the following composite characters: "è, ì, ò, ù, ï, ü", but have come to be abolished during the last 5 orthographic reforms occurring between 1911 and 2011.
- Acute accents are also used in Slavic language dictionaries and textbooks to indicate lexical stress, placed over the vowel of the stressed syllable. This can also serve to disambiguate meaning (e.g., in Russian писа́ть (pisáť) means "to write", but пи́сать (písať) means "to piss"), or "бо́льшая часть" (the biggest part) vs "больша́я часть" (the big part).
- Slovak
The Slovak alphabet uses a modification of the Latin alphabet. The modifications include the four diacriticals placed above certain letters. Therefore the Slovak alphabet has 46 graphemes.- Vowels :- Consonants :Notes...
has the acute (á, é, í, ĺ, ó, ŕ, ú, ý), the caron (č, ď, dž, ľ, ň, š, ť, ž), the circumflex (only above o – ô) and the diaeresis (only above a – ä).
- Spanish uses the acute accent and the diaeresis. The acute is used on a vowel in a stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to "break up" a diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
as in tío . Moreover, the acute can be used to distinguish words that otherwise are spelt alike, such as si ("if") and sí ("yes"), and also to distinguish interrogative and exclamative pronouns from homophones with a different grammatical function, such as donde/¿dónde? ("where"/"where?") or como/¿cómo? ("as"/"how?"). The diaeresis is used only over u (ü) for it to be pronounced [w] in the combinations gue and gui, where u is normally silent, for example ambigüedad. In poetry, the diaeresis may be used on i and u as a way to force a hiatus.
- Swedish
Modern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....
uses the acute accentThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
to show non-standard stress, for example in (café) and (résumé). This occasionally helps resolve ambiguities, such as ide (hibernation) versus idé (idea). In these words, the acute accent is not optional. Some proper names use non-standard diacritics, such as Carolina KlüftCarolina Evelyn Klüft is a Swedish athlete competing in triple jump, long jump and formerly in heptathlon and pentathlon. She won the Olympic heptathlon title in 2004...
and Staël von HolsteinAccording to tradition, the family which originated from ancient Rhenish-German nobility, came to Sweden from Livonia during the 17th century via the Polish Major Hildebrand Staël...
. For foreign loanwords the original accents are strongly recommended, unless the word has been infused into the language, in which case they are optional. Hence crème fraîche but ampere.
- Tamil does not have any diacritics in itself, but uses the Hindu numerals
Arabic numerals or Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals or Indo-Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, in which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a numeral...
2, 3 and 4 as diacritics to represent aspirated, voiced, and voiced-aspirated consonants when the Tamil scriptThe Tamil script is a script that is used to write the Tamil language as well as other minority languages such as Badaga, Irulas, and Paniya...
is used to write long passages in Sanskrit.
- Thai
Thai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....
has its own system of diacritics derived from Indian numeralsMost of the positional base 10 numeral systems in the world have originated from India, where the concept of positional numeration was first developed...
, which denote different tonesTone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
.
- Vietnamese
The Vietnamese alphabet, called Chữ Quốc Ngữ , usually shortened to Quốc Ngữ , is the modern writing system for the Vietnamese language...
uses the acute accent (dấu sắc), the grave accent (dấu huyền), the tilde (dấu ngã), the dot below (dấu nặng) and the hook (dấu hỏi) on vowels as toneTone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
indicators.
- Welsh
Welsh orthography uses 28 letters of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as older loanwords.The acute accent, the grave accent, the circumflex and the diaeresis mark are also used on vowels, but accented letters are not regarded as part of the alphabet.The letter j is accepted in...
uses the circumflex, diaeresis, acute and grave accents on its seven vowels a, e, i, o, u, w, y. The most common is the circumflex (which it calls to bach, meaning "little roof", or acen grom "crooked accent", or hirnod "long sign") to denote a long vowel, usually to disambiguate it from a similar word with a short vowel. The rarer grave accent has the opposite effect, shortening vowel sounds that would usually be pronounced long. The acute accent and diaeresis are also occasionally used, to denote stress and vowel separation respectively. The w-circumflex and the y-circumflex are among the most commonly accented characters in Welsh, but unusual in languages generally, and were until recently very hard to obtain in word-processed and HTML documents.
English
EnglishThe modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
is one of the few European languages that does not have many words that contain diacritical marks. Exceptions are unassimilated foreign loanwords, including borrowings from
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and, increasingly,
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
; however, the diacritic is also sometimes omitted from such words. Loanwords that frequently appear with the diacritic in English include
café,
résumé or
resumé (a usage that helps distinguish it from the verb
resume),
soufflé, and
naïveté (see
English words with diacritics). In older practice (and even among some orthographically conservative modern writers) one may see examples such as
élite and
rôle.
English speakers and writers once used the diaeresis more often than now in words such as
coöperation (from Fr.
coopération),
zoölogy (from Grk.
zoologia), and
seeër (now more commonly
see-er), but this practice has become far less common;
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine is one of the only major publications that still uses it.
A few English words can only be distinguished from others by a diacritic or modified letter, including
animéFor other uses, see: Anime.Animé or Zanzibar copal is an oleo-resin which is discharged from the Jatobá tree and other species of Hymenaea growing in tropical South America....
, exposé, lamé, maté, öreÖre is the discontinued centesimal subdivision of the Swedish krona. The plural and singular are the same in the indefinite forms, whereas the singular definite form is öret and the plural definite is örena. The name derives from the Latin aureus , the name of a coin worth 25 denarii...
, øreØre is the centesimal subdivision of the Norwegian and Danish krones. The Faroese division is called the oyra, but is equal in value to the Danish coin. Before their discontinuation, the corresponding divisions of the Swedish krona and the Icelandic króna were the öre and the eyrir...
, pâtéPâté is a mixture of ground meat and fat minced into a spreadable paste. Common additions include vegetables, herbs, spices, and either wine or cognac, armagnac or brandy...
, piquéPiqué, or marcella, refers to a weaving style, normally used with cotton yarn, which is characterized by raised parallel cords or fine ribbing. Twilled cotton and corded cotton are close relatives....
, roséA rosé is a type of wine that has some of the color typical of a red wine, but only enough to turn it pink. The pink color can range from a pale orange to a vivid near-purple, depending on the grapes and wine making techniques.- Production techniques :There are three major ways to produce rosé...
, and
souffléA soufflé is a light baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert...
. The same is true of
résuméA résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...
, alternately
but nevertheless it is sometimes spelled
resume in the US, and
saké, which is more commonly spelled
sake. In a few words, diacritics that did not exist in the original have been added for disambiguation, as in maté (from Sp. and Port.
mate) and
MaléMalé , is the capital and most populous city in the Republic of Maldives. It is located at the southern edge of North Malé Atoll . It is also one of the Administrative divisions of the Maldives. Traditionally it was the King's Island, from where the ancient Maldive Royal dynasties ruled and where...
(from Dhivehi މާލެ).
The acute and grave accents are occasionally used in poetry and lyrics: the acute to indicate stress overtly where it might be ambiguous (
rébel vs.
rebél) or nonstandard for metrical reasons (
caléndar), the grave to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced (
warnèd, parlìament). In certain personal names such as
Renée and
Zoë, the diacritical marks are included more often than omitted.
Transliteration
Several languages that are not written with the Roman alphabet are
transliteratedTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
, or romanized, using diacritics. Examples:
- Arabic
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
has several romanisations, depending on the type of the application, region, intended audience, country, etc. many of them extensively use diacritics, e.g., some methods use a dot for rendering emphatic consonantEmphatic consonant is a term widely used in Semitic linguistics to describe one of a series of obstruent consonants which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages, the members of this series may be realized as pharyngealized,...
s . Macron is often used to render long vowels. is often used for /ʃ/, for /ɣ/.
- Chinese
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
has several romanizationThe romanization of Mandarin Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history...
s that use the umlaut, but only on u (ü). In Hanyu Pinyin, the four tonesTone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
of Mandarin Chinese are denoted by the macron (first tone), acute (second tone), caron (third tone) and grave (fourth tone) diacritics. Example: ā, á, ǎ, à.
- Romanized Japanese
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
(Romaji) uses diacritics to mark long vowels. The Hepburn romanizationThe is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...
system uses a macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
to mark long vowels, and the Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shikiNihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki Rōmaji is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. In discussion about romaji, it is abbreviated as Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, Nippon-shiki is the most regular, and has...
systems use a circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
.
- Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, as well as many of its descendants, like HindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
and BengaliBengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, uses a lossless transliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system for representing words in the Roman alphabet. This includes several letters with diacritical markings, such as horizontal lines above vowels (ā, ī, ū), dots above and below consonants as well as a few others (ś, ñ).
See also
- Alphabets derived from the Latin
A Latin alphabet is an alphabetical writing system that uses letters of the original Roman Latin alphabet and often various extensions, the Latin script...
:Category:Latin-derived alphabets
:Category:Specific letter-diacritic combinations
- Collating sequence
The term collating sequence refers to the order in which individual characters should be taken when sorting a collection of character strings using dictionary order. This article is concerned with the order of the alphabetical characters comprising variants of the Latin alphabet in various languages...
- Combining character
In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks ....
- English words with diacritics
- Heavy metal umlaut
A metal umlaut is a diaeresis that is sometimes used gratuitously or decoratively over letters in the names of hard rock or heavy metal bands—for example those of Mötley Crüe and Motörhead...
- Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
- List of Latin letters
- List of U.S. cities with diacritics
- Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
- Typing accents
- Wiktionary:Appendix:English words with diacritics
External links