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Diaeresis | |
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Diaeresis[a] (/daɪˈɛrəsɪs,-ˈɪər-/dy-ERR-ə-siss, -EER-)[1] is adiacritical mark consisting oftwo dots (◌̈) that indicates that two adjacent vowel letters are separate syllables – avowel hiatus (also called a diaeresis) – rather than adigraph ordiphthong.
It consists of a two dots diacritic placed over a letter, generally avowel.[2][b]
The diaeresis diacritic indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form adigraph and be pronounced as one sound, are instead to be read as separate vowels in two syllables. For example, in the spelling "coöperate", the diaeresis reminds the reader that the word has four syllables,co-op-er-ate, not three,*coop-er-ate. In British English this usage has been considered obsolete for many years, and in US English, although it persisted for longer, it is now considered archaic as well.[3] Nevertheless, it is still used by the US magazineThe New Yorker.[4] In English language texts it is perhaps most familiar in theloan wordsnaïve,Noël andChloë, and is also used officially in the name of the islandTeän and ofCoös County. Languages such asDutch,Afrikaans,Catalan,French,Galician,Greek, andSpanish make regular use of the diaeresis. (In some Germanic and other languages, theumlaut diacritic has the same appearance but a different function.)
The worddiaeresis is fromGreekdiaíresis (διαίρεσις), meaning "division", "separation", or "distinction".[5]The wordtrema (French:tréma), used in linguistics and alsoclassical scholarship, is from the Greektrē̂ma (τρῆμα) and means a "perforation", "orifice", or "pip" (as ondice),[6] thus describing the form of the diacritic rather than its function.
In Greek, two dots, called atrema, were used in theHellenistic period on the lettersι andυ, most often at the beginning of a word, as inϊδων,ϋιος, andϋβριν, to separate them from a preceding vowel.[citation needed] This was needed because writing wasscriptio continua, where spacing was not yet used as aword divider.[citation needed] However, it was also used to indicate that a vowel formed its own syllable (inphonological hiatus), as inηϋ andΑϊδι.[7][8]
The diaeresis was borrowed for this purpose in several languages of western and southern Europe, among themOccitan,Catalan,French,Dutch,Welsh, and (rarely)English. As a further extension, some languages began to use a diaeresis whenever a vowel letter was to be pronounced separately. This included vowels that would otherwise form digraphs with consonants or simply be silent. For example, in the orthographies ofSpanish,Catalan,French,Galician andOccitan, the graphemesgu andqu normally represent a single sound,[ɡ] or[k], before the front vowelse andi (or before nearly all vowels in Occitan). In the few exceptions where theu is pronounced, a diaeresis is added to it.
Examples:
This has been extended toGanda, where a diaeresis separatesy fromn:anya[aɲa],anÿa[aɲja].
'Ÿ' is sometimes used in transcribedGreek, where it represents the Greek letterυ (upsilon) inhiatus withα. For example, it can be seen in the transcriptionArtaÿctes of the Persian nameἈρταΰκτης (Artaüktēs) at the very end ofHerodotus, or the name ofMount Taÿgetus on the southern Peloponnesus peninsula, which in modern Greek is spelledΤαΰγετος.
InCatalan, the digraphsai,ei,oi,au,eu, andiu are normally read as diphthongs. To indicate exceptions to this rule (hiatus), a diaeresis mark is placed on the second vowel: without this the wordsraïm[rəˈim] ("grape") anddiürn[diˈurn] ("diurnal") would be read *[ˈrajm] and *[ˈdiwrn], respectively.
InDutch, spellings such ascliënt are necessary because the digraphsoe andie normally represent the simple vowels[u] and[i], respectively. However, hyphenation is now preferred for compound words so thatzeeëend (sea duck) is now spelledzee-eend.[9]
In ModernEnglish, the diaeresis, thegrave accent and theacute accent are theonly diacritics used apart fromloanwords. It may be used optionally for words that do not have a morphological break at the diaeresis point, such as "naïve", "Boötes", and "Noël". It was previously used in words such as "coöperate" and "reënter":[10] in such cases, the diaeresis has been replaced by the use of a hyphen ("co-operate", "re-enter"), particularly in British English, or by no indication at all ("cooperate", "reenter"), as in American English. The use of the diaeresis persists in a few publications, notablyThe New Yorker[11][4] andMIT Technology Review underJason Pontin. The diaeresis mark is sometimes used in English personal first and last names to indicate that two adjacent vowels should be pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. Examples include the given namesChloë andZoë, which otherwise might be pronounced with a silente. To discourage a similar mispronunciation, the mark is also used in the surnameBrontë.[12] (See alsoUmlaut (diacritic) § Use of the umlaut for special effect.)
InFrench, the diaeresis is referred to as atréma. Some diphthongs that were written with pairs of vowel letters were later reduced tomonophthongs, which led to an extension of the value of this diacritic. It often now indicates that the second vowel letter is to be pronounced separately from the first, rather than merge with it into a single sound. For example, the French wordsmaïs[ma.is] andnaïve[na.iv] would be pronounced*[mɛ] and*[nɛv], respectively, without the diaeresis mark, since thedigraphai is pronounced[ɛ].[c] The English spelling ofNoël meaning "Christmas" (French:Noël[nɔ.ɛl]) comes from this use.Ÿ occurs in French as a variant ofï in a few proper nouns, as in the name of theParisian suburb ofL'Haÿ-les-Roses[la.ileʁoz] and in the surname of thehouse of Croÿ[kʁu.i]. In some names, a diaeresis is used to indicate two vowels historically in hiatus, although the second vowel has since fallen silent, as inSaint-Saëns[sɛ̃sɑ̃s] andde Staël[dəstal].
The diaeresis is also used in French when a silente is added to the sequencegu, to show that it is to be pronounced[ɡy] rather than as a digraph for[ɡ]. For example, when the feminine‑e is added toaigu[eɡy] "sharp", the pronunciation does not change in most accents:[d]aiguë[eɡy] as opposed to the city nameAigues-Mortes[ɛɡmɔʁt]. Similar is the feminine nounciguë[siɡy] "hemlock"; comparefigue[fiɡ] "fig". In the ongoingFrench spelling reform of 1990, this was moved to theu (aigüe,cigüe). (Incanoë[kanɔ.e] thee is not silent, and so is not affected by the spelling reform.)
InGalician, diaeresis is employed to indicate hiatus in the first and second persons of the plural of theimperfect tense of verbs ended in-aer,-oer,-aír and-oír (saïamos,caïades). This stems from the fact that an unstressed-i- is left between vowels, but constituting its own syllable, which would end with a form identical in writing but different in pronunciation with those of the Presentsubjunctive (saiamos,caiades), as those have saidi forming a diphthong with the followinga.
In addition, identically to Spanish, the diaeresis is used to differentiate the syllablesgüe[ɡʷe] angüi[ɡʷi] fromgue[ɡe] andgui[ɡi].[13]
InGerman, in addition to the pervasive use ofumlaut diacritics with vowels, diaeresis abovee occurs in a few proper names, such asFerdinand Piëch andBernhard Hoëcker.
InModern Greek,αϊ andοϊ represent thediphthongs/ai̯/ and/oi̯/, andεϊ the disyllabic sequence/e.i/, whereasαι,οι, andει transcribe the simple vowels/e/,/i/, and/i/. The diacritic can be the only one on a vowel, as inακαδημαϊκός (akadimaïkós, "academic"), or in combination with anacute accent, as inπρωτεΐνη (proteïni, "protein").
TheOccitan use of diaeresis is very similar to that of Catalan:ai, ei, oi, au, eu, ou are diphthongs consisting of one syllable butaï, eï, oï, aü, eü, oü are groups consisting of two distinct syllables.
InPortuguese, a diaeresis (Portuguese:trema) was used in (mainly Brazilian)Portuguese until the1990 Orthographic Agreement. It was used in combinationsgüe/qüe andgüi/qüi, in words likesangüíneo[sɐ̃ˈɡwinju] "sanguineous". After the implementation of the Orthographic Agreement, it was abolished altogether from all Portuguese words.
Spanish uses the diaeresis obligatorily in words such ascigüeña andpingüino; and optionally in some poetic (or, until 1950, academic) contexts in words likevïuda, andsüave.[14][15]
InWelsh, where the diaeresis appears, it is usually on the stressed vowel, and this is most often on the first of the two adjacent vowels; typical examples arecopïo[kɔ.ˈpi.ɔ] (to copy) contrasted withmopio[ˈmɔ.pjɔ] (to mop). It is also used on the first of two vowels that would otherwise form a diphthong (crëir[ˈkreː.ɪr] ('created') rather thancreir[ˈkrəi̯r] ('believed')) and on the first of three vowels to separate it from a following diphthong:crëwyd is pronounced[ˈkreː.ʊi̯d] rather than[ˈkrɛu̯.ɨd].
...it is much less used than formerly, having been largely replaced by the hyphen...
The special tool we use here at The New Yorker for punching out the two dots that we then center carefully over the second vowel in such words as "naïve" and "Laocoön" will be getting a workout this year, as the Democrats coöperate to reëlect the President.
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