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.)

Similar looks, different functions

Umlaut

The same diacritic mark is used for a different purpose in German: in this language it marks a variation in the pronunciation of vowels known as umlaut. Although sometimes rendered as two vertical or oblique bars above the letter, in most typescripts it is almost indistinguishable from diaeresis — the only difference being that in well-designed typographical fonts umlaut dots will be very close to the letter's body, while diaeresis dots will be a bit farther up with a bit more of white space between the letter and the dots. In computer screen fonts the difference is usually not noticeable.

Related Topics:
German - Umlaut

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Because of this similarity, a real diaeresis can occur only on the letters e and i in German texts.

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The umlaut mark evolved from the ligatures æ and ? via a small 'e' written above the letter (which used to look similar to a pair of bars in blackletter handwriting), to small bars or dots above the letter; the umlauts can be substituted by 'ae', 'oe' and 'ue' if necessary; they should not be substituted by the bare vowels 'a', 'o', and 'u'.

Related Topics:
æ - ? - Blackletter

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The need to distinguish between Umlaut and Trema in Unicode has led to the following recommendation by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2, for use only in cases where a need to distinguish between umlaut and trema is present:

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• To represent Trema use Combining Grapheme Joiner (CGJ, 034F) + Combining Diaeresis (0308)
• To represent Umlaut use Combining Diaeresis (0308)

Other evolved ligatures

In Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Slovak, Turkish, Icelandic, and Swedish, there are characters that appear similar to German umlauts (ü, ä, and ö), represent sounds similar to the corresponding sounds in German, and have the same origin. Despite this, they are in fact considered letters in their own right, as is å. This is the reason why, unlike in German, it is not correct to replace them with 'ae', 'oe', or 'ue'. This usage of umlauted letters, particularly ü, also occurs in the transcription of languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, such as Chinese. For example, ? (meaning female) is transcribed as nü.

Related Topics:
Finnish - Estonian - Hungarian - Slovak - Turkish - Icelandic - Swedish - Umlaut - ü - ä - ö - å - Chinese

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In Lëtzebuergesch, the native language of Luxembourg, the two dots over the first 'e' represent a stressed schwa. Since the language uses the mark to show stress, it cannot be used to modify the 'u' which therefore has to be 'ue'.

Related Topics:
Lëtzebuergesch - Schwa

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As such uses do not mark grammatical variation, i.e. of tense or mood, nor syllable modification, they are not properly cases of umlaut. Hence it is improper to call these characters umlauts.

Related Topics:
Tense - Mood

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The letter IJ is sometimes written ?/ÿ, but this is not a standard use. ? tends to be used because the "lange IJ" represents a single letter in all cases, for example IJsselmeer. ?/? are the actual single-letter forms, but these are poorly supported in computer systems.

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Other evolved ligatures include the letters W ("double U"), æ, and the German ß.

Related Topics:
W - æ - ß

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