Diaeresis

In linguistics, a diaeresis or dieresis (AE) (from Greek ???????? (diaerein), to divide) is the modification of a syllable by distinctly pronouncing one of its vowels. The diacritic mark composed of two small dots ( ? ) placed over a vowel to indicate this modification is also called a diaeresis. (In the case of an "i", it replaces the original dot.)

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In French, Greek, and Dutch, and in English borrowings from them, this is often done to indicate that the second of a pair of vowels is to be pronounced as a separate vowel rather than being treated as silent or as part of a diphthong, as in the word na?ve or the names Chlo? and Zo?. Welsh also uses the accent for this purpose, with the diaeresis usually indicating the stressed vowel. French also uses the diaeresis to indicate syllabification in, for example, Ga?lle and pa?en. It is called trema or deelteken in Dutch, tr?ma in French.

Linguistics: Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. (Lay people sometimes use the term linguistician, but as Aitchison 2003 points out, this is "too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.")...

AE: The form ? or ? is also a letter and ligature in the Latin alphabet. See ?....

Greek: The noun Greek refers to:...