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.)

Diaeresis in Cyrillic

Diaeresis was used in the early Cyrillic alphabet which was used to write Old Church Slavonic. The modern Cyrillic Belarusian and Russian alphabets include the letter Yo (?, ?), although in modern Russian it is usually printed without the diaeresis (?, ?) unless doing so would create ambiguity. Since the 1870s, the letter Yi (?, ?) has been used in the Ukrainian alphabet.

Related Topics:
Early Cyrillic alphabet - Old Church Slavonic - Cyrillic - Belarusian - Russian alphabet - Yo - Yi - Ukrainian alphabet

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The Cyrillic alphabet letters A, O and U (?, ?, ?) with diaeresis have been used in the Altay, Mari and Kerä?en Tatar alphabets for the sounds ä, ö, ü since the 19th century. In the Udmurt language, the diaeresis is also used with the consonant letters Zhe (?, ? ? ?, ?) and Ze (?, ? ? ?, ?).

Related Topics:
Cyrillic alphabet - A - O - U - Altay - Mari - Tatar alphabet - Udmurt language - Zhe - Ze

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