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.)

Usage

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 naïve or the names Chloë and Zoë. 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, Gaëlle and païen. It is called trema or deelteken in Dutch, tréma in French.

Related Topics:
French - Greek - Dutch - English - Diphthong - Welsh

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The diaeresis is also occasionally used on native English words for the above purposes (as in "coöperate", "reënact", and the surname "Brontë"), but this usage has become very rare since the 1940s. The New Yorker, The Economist and MIT's Technology Review can be noted as some of the few publications that spell "coöperate" with a diaeresis.

Related Topics:
1940s - The New Yorker - The Economist - Technology Review

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In Spanish and Portuguese, it is used over the vowel u to indicate that it is pronounced in places where that vowel would normally be silent. In particular, the u is silent in the letter combinations gue and gui, but in words such as vergüenza ("shame") or pingüino ("penguin"), the u is pronounced, forming a diphthong with the following vowel ( and respectively). Only Brazilian Portuguese uses the diaeresis like Spanish and when the "u" is not silent in the letter combinations "que" and "qui", in words such "cinqüenta" ("fifty") and "qüinqüênio" (a five-year period). The diaeresis doesn't exist in the Portuguese of Portugal and its other former colonies.

Related Topics:
Spanish - Portuguese - Brazilian Portuguese

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For instance, in Spanish, ge is pronounce /xe/, gue is pronounced /ge/ and güe is pronounced /gwe/.

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In Catalan, diaereses serve two different purposes. Similarly to Spanish, they are used in the groups güe, güi, qüe, and qüi to indicate that the u is in fact pronounced forming a diphthong with the following vowel ( and respectively). For example, aigües ("waters"), qüestió ("matter"). Also, similarly to French, diaereses are used over i or u to indicate that they do not form a diphthong with a preceding vowel. For example, veïna ("neighbour", feminine), diürn ("diurnal").

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A mixing of uses and letters can be standed for Galician: diaereses is used to mark the pronunciation of "u" after "g" (but not after "q" as Brazilian or Catalan) and also for hiatus (no diphthong) in some words (namedly tenses for verbs). So, a word can be distinguished by the use or not of diaereses: "saiamos" (subjunctive present) and "saïamos" (imperfect present), another verbs with infinitive ended with "-aer" ("caer", to fall), "-oer" ("moer", mill), "-air" ("saír", to go out), "-oir" ("oír", to listen), and so on.

Related Topics:
Galician - Tense - Verb - Subjunctive - Present - Imperfect - Infinitive

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? can be used in transcribed Greek: there it represents the non-diphthong ?? (alpha upsilon), e.g. in the Persian name Artaÿctes at the very end of Herodotus. ? is also rarely found in French in certain proper nouns (for instance, the name of the Parisian suburb of L'Haÿ-les-Roses). In addition, ? occurs in handwritten Dutch as a glyph variant of the letter IJ.

Related Topics:
Greek - Diphthong - Herodotus - Paris - L'Haÿ-les-Roses - IJ

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