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Two dots | |
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⟨ ⟩,| |,/ /, and[ ]are used here, seethis page.Diacritical marks oftwo dots¨, placed side-by-side over or under a letter, are used in several languages for several different purposes. The most familiar toEnglish-language speakers are thediaeresis and theumlaut, though there are numerous others. For example, inAlbanian,ë represents aschwa. Such diacritics are also sometimes used for stylistic reasons (as in the family nameBrontë or the band nameMötley Crüe).
In modern computer systems usingUnicode, the two-dot diacritics are almost alwaysencoded identically, having the samecode point.[1] For example,U+00F6 öLATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS represents botho-umlaut ando-diaeresis. Their appearance in print or on screen may vary betweentypefaces but rarely within the same typeface.
The wordtrema (French:tréma), used in linguistics and alsoclassical scholarship, describes the form of both the umlaut diacritic and the diaeresis rather than their function and is used in those contexts to refer to either.
As the "diaeresis" diacritic, it is used to mark the separation of two distinct vowels in adjacent syllables when an instance ofdiaeresis (or hiatus) occurs, so as to distinguish from adigraph ordiphthong. For example, in the obsolete spelling "coöperate", the diaeresis reminded the reader that the word has four syllablesco-op-er-ate, not three. It is used in several languages of western and southern Europe, though rarely now in English.[2] One well-known usage is inFrench - the diaeresis is used in naïve, which is commonly spelled in English without the diaeresis. It is, however, obligatory in French, to show that it is pronounced [na.iv] rather than [nev].
As the "umlaut" diacritic, it indicates asound shift – also known asumlaut – in which aback vowel becomes afront vowel. It is a specific feature ofGerman and other Germanic languages, affecting the graphemes⟨a⟩,⟨o⟩,⟨u⟩ and⟨au⟩, which are modified to⟨ä⟩,⟨ö⟩,⟨ü⟩ and⟨äu⟩.
It derives from theSutterlin script, formerly used widely in German handwriting, in which the lettere is formed as two short parallel vertical lines very close together (see underSütterlin#Characteristics).
The two dot diacritic is also sometimes used for purely stylistic reasons. For example, theBrontë family, whose surname was derived fromGaelic and had beenanglicised as "Prunty", or "Brunty": At some point, the father of the sisters,Patrick Brontë (born Brunty), decided on the alternative spelling with a diaeresis diacritic over the terminal⟨e⟩ to indicate that the name had two syllables.
Similarly the "metal umlaut" is a diacritic that is sometimes used gratuitously or decoratively over letters in the names ofhard rock orheavy metal bands – for example, those ofMotörhead andMötley Crüe, and of parody bands, such asSpın̈al Tap.
A double dot is also used as a diacritic in cases where it functions as neither a diaeresis nor an umlaut. In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a double dot above a letter is used for acentralized vowel, a situation more similar to umlaut than to diaeresis. In other languages it is used for vowel length, nasalization, tone, and various other uses where diaeresis or umlaut was available typographically. The IPA uses a double dot below a letter to indicatebreathy (murmured) voice.[3][b]
Jacaltec (aMayan language) andMalagasy are among the very few languages with a double dot on the letter "n"; in both,n̈ is thevelar nasal[ŋ].
InUdmurt, a double dot is also used with the consonant lettersӝ[dʒ] (from ж[ʒ]),ӟ[dʑ] (from з[z]~[ʑ]) andӵ[tʃ] (from ч[tɕ]).
When distinction is important,Ḧ andẍ are used for representing[ħ] and[ɣ] in the KurdishKurmanji alphabet (which are otherwise represented by "h" and "x"). These sounds are borrowed from Arabic.
Ẅ andÿ:Ÿ is generally a vowel, but it is used as the (semi-vowel) consonant[ɰ] (a[w] without the use of the lips) inTlingit. This sound is also found inCoast Tsimshian, where it is writtenẅ.
A number of languages inVanuatu use double dots on consonants, to representlinguolabial (or "apicolabial") phonemes in their orthography. ThusAraki contrasts bilabialp[p] with linguolabialp̈[t̼]; bilabialm[m] with linguolabialm̈[n̼]; and bilabialv[β] with linguolabialv̈[ð̼].
Seneca uses⟨s̈⟩ for[ʃ].
InArabic the letterẗ is used in theISO 233 transliteration for thetāʾ marbūṭah [ة], used to mark feminine gender in nouns and adjectives.
Syriac uses a two dots above a letter, calledSiyame, to indicate that the word should be understood as plural. For instance,ܒܝܬܐ (bayta) means "house", whileܒܝ̈ܬܐ (bayte) means "houses". The sign is used especially when no vowel marks are present, which could differentiate between the two forms. Although the origin of theSiyame is different from that of the diaeresis sign, in modern computer systems both are represented by the same Unicode character. This, however, often leads to wrong rendering of the Syriac text.
TheN'Ko script, used to write theMandé languages ofWest Africa uses a two-dot diacritic (among others) to represent non-native sounds. The dots are slightly larger than those used for diaeresis or umlaut.
The IPA specifies a "subscript umlaut", for example Hindi[kʊm̤ar] "potter";[3]: 25 theALA-LC romanization system provides for its use and is one of themain schemes to romanize Persian (for example, rendering⟨ض⟩ as⟨z̤⟩). The notation was used to write some Asian languages in Latin script, for exampleRed Karen.
The double-dot underneath a vowel is still used inFuzhou romanization ofEastern Min to indicate a modified vowel sound; placing the modifier diacritic underneath the vowel letter makes it easier to combine it with tonal diacritics above the letter, as in the word Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄ ("Eastern Min language").
The diacritics 〮 and〯 , known as Bangjeom (방점; 傍點), were used to mark pitch accents inHangul forMiddle Korean. They were written to the left of a syllable in vertical writing and above a syllable in horizontal writing.
Character encoding generally treats the umlaut and the diaeresis as the same diacritic mark.Unicode refers to both as diaereses without making any distinction, although the term itselfhas a more precise literary meaning. For example,U+00F6 öLATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS represents botho-umlaut ando-diaeresis, while similar codes are used to represent all such cases.
Unicode encodes a number of cases of "letter with a two dots diacritic" asprecomposed characters and these are displayed below. (Unicode uses the term "Diaeresis" for all two-dot diacritics, irrespective of the actual term used for the language in question.) In addition, many more symbols may be composed using thecombining character facility,U+0308 ◌̈COMBINING DIAERESIS, that may be used with any letter or other diacritic to create a customised symbol but this does not mean that the result has any real-world application and are not shown in the table.
Both the combining characterU+0308 and the pre-composed codepoints may be regarded as an umlaut or a diaeresis according to context. Compound diacritics are possible, for exampleU+01DA ǚLATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND CARON, used as atonal marks for Hanyu Pinyin, which uses both a two dots diacritic with acaron diacritic. Conversely, when the letter to be accented is an⟨i⟩, the diacritic replaces thetittle, thus:⟨ï⟩.
Sometimes, there's a need to distinguish between the umlaut sign and the diaeresis sign. For instance, either mayappear in a German name. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 recommends the following for these cases:[6]
The same advice can be found in the official Unicode FAQ.[7]
Since version 3.2.0, Unicode also providesU+0364 ◌ͤCOMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER E which can produce the older umlaut typography.
Unicode provides a combining double dot below asU+0324 ◌̤COMBINING DIAERESIS BELOW.
Finally, for use with theN'Ko script, there isU+07F3 ◌߳NKO COMBINING DOUBLE DOT ABOVE.
ASCII, a seven-bit code with just 95 "printable" characters, has no provision for any kind of dot diacritic. Subsequent standardisation treated ASCII as the US national variant ofISO/IEC 646: the French, German and other national variantsreassigned a few code points to specific vowels with diacritics, as precomposed characters. Some of these variants also defined the sequencee,backspace," as producingë but few terminals supported this.
The subsequent (eight bit)ISO 8859-1 character encoding includes the lettersä,ë,ï,ö,ü, and their respectivecapital forms, as well asÿ inlower case only, withŸ added in the revised editionISO 8859-15 andWindows-1252.
Character encoding generally treats the umlaut and the diaeresis as the same diacritic mark.Unicode refers to both as diaereses without making any distinction, although the term itselfhas a more precise literary meaning. For example,U+00F6 öLATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS represents botho-umlaut ando-diaeresis, while similar codes are used to represent all such cases.
In countries where the local language(s) routinely include letters with diacritics, local keyboards are typically engraved with those symbols.If letters with double dots are not present on the keyboard, there are a number of ways to input them into a computer system. (For details, see local sources, computer system documentation and the articleUnicode input.)
Among the many mysteries of The New Yorker is that funny little umlaut over words like coöperate and reëlect. The New Yorker seems to be the only publication on the planet that uses it, and I always found it a little pretentious until I did some research. Turns out, it's not an umlaut. It's a diaeresis.
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