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A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
added to a
letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic'' is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an
attributive In grammar, an attributive expression is a word or phrase within a noun phrase that modifies the head noun. It may be an: * attributive adjective * attributive noun * attributive verb or other part of speech, such as an attributive numeral. ...
sense, whereas ''diacritical'' is only an
adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
. Some diacritics, such as the
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
( ◌́ ) and
grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as gravey ...
( ◌̀ ), are often called ''accents''. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters. The main use of diacritics in Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. Historically, English has used the diaeresis diacritic to indicate the correct pronunciation of ambiguous words, such as "coöperate", without which the letter sequence could be misinterpreted to be pronounced . Other examples are the acute and grave accents, which can indicate that a vowel is to be pronounced differently than is normal in that position, for example not reduced to /ə/ or silent as in the case of the two uses of the letter e in the noun ''
résumé A résumé, sometimes spelled resume (or alternatively resumé), also called a curriculum vitae (CV), is a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments. Résumés can be used for a variety of rea ...
'' (as opposed to the verb ''resume'') and the help sometimes provided in the pronunciation of some words such as ''doggèd'', ''learnèd'', ''blessèd'', and especially words pronounced differently than normal in poetry (for example ''movèd'', ''breathèd''). Most other words with diacritics in English are borrowings from languages such as
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
to better preserve the spelling, such as the diaeresis on and , the
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
from , the
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
in the word , and the
cedille A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ...
in . All these diacritics, however, are frequently omitted in writing, and English is the only major modern European language that does not have diacritics in common usage. In
Latin-script alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-lette ...
s in other languages, diacritics may distinguish between homonyms, such as the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
("there") versus ("the"), which are both pronounced . In Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question. In other alphabetic systems, diacritics may perform other functions. Vowel pointing systems, namely the
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
harakat The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , '). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where s ...
(  etc.) and the
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
niqqud (  etc.) systems, indicate vowels that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The Indic virama (  etc.) and the Arabic sukūn (  ) mark the absence of vowels.
Cantillation mark Hebrew cantillation is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Bible, to compleme ...
s indicate prosody. Other uses include the Early Cyrillic
titlo Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in early Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "", "title" (compare dated English ''tittle'' ...
stroke ( ◌҃ ) and the Hebrew gershayim (  ), which, respectively, mark
abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
s or
acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s, and Greek diacritical marks, which showed that letters of the alphabet were being used as numerals. In Vietnamese and the
Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
official romanization system for Chinese, diacritics are used to mark the tones of the syllables in which the marked vowels occur. In orthography and
collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new, distinct letter or as a letter–diacritic combination. This varies from language to language and may vary from case to case within a language. In some cases, letters are used as "in-line diacritics", with the same function as ancillary glyphs, in that they modify the sound of the letter preceding them, as in the case of the "h" in the English pronunciation of "sh" and "th". Such letter combinations are sometimes even collated as a single distinct letter. For example, the spelling sch was traditionally often treated as a separate letter in German. Words with that spelling were listed after all other words spelled with s in card catalogs in the Vienna public libraries, for example (before digitization).


Types

Among the types of diacritic used in alphabets based on the Latin script are: * accents (so called because the acute, grave, and circumflex were originally used to indicate different types of pitch accents in the
polytonic transcription Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes fiv ...
of Greek) ** –
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
( la,
apex The apex is the highest point of something. The word may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional entities * Apex (comics), a teenaged super villainess in the Marvel Universe * Ape-X, a super-intelligent ape in the Squadron Supreme universe *Apex ...
) ** –
grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as gravey ...
** –
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
** –
caron A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...
, wedge ** – double acute ** –
double grave The double grave accent ( ̏ ) is a diacritic used in scholarly discussions of the Serbo-Croatian and sometimes Slovene languages. It is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian, double grave accent is ...
** –
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
* one dot ** – overdot used in many orthographies and transcriptions ** – an
underdot When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of t ...
is also used in many orthographies and transcriptions ** – interpunct is used as a diacritic in
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of Indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing sy ...
** tittle, the superscript dot of the modern lowercase Latin ''i'' and ''j'' * two dots: ** two overdots () are used for umlaut, diaeresis and others; ** two underdots are used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and the
ALA-LC romanization ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script. Applications The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
system ** – triangular colon, used in the IPA to mark
long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
(the "dots" are triangular, not circular). * curves ** –
breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Sl ...
** – inverted breve ** –
sicilicus A sicilicus was an old Latin diacritical mark, , like a reversed C (Ɔ) placed above a letter and evidently deriving its name from its shape like a little sickle (which is '' sicilis'' in Latin). The ancient sources say that during the time of th ...
, a
palaeographic Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...
diacritic similar to a caron or breve ** –
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
** –
titlo Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in early Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "", "title" (compare dated English ''tittle'' ...
* vertical stroke ** – syllabic a subscript vertical stroke is used in
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
to mark syllabicity and in to mark a schwa * macron or horizontal line ** – macron ** – underbar * overlays ** – vertical bar through the character ** –
slash Slash may refer to: * Slash (punctuation), the "/" character Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Slash (Marvel Comics) * Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'') Music * Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band * Nash ...
through the character ** –
crossbar Crossbar may refer to: Structures * Latch (hardware), a post barring a door * Top tube of a bicycle frame * Crossbar, the horizontal member of various sports goals * Crossbar, a horizontal member of an electricity pylon Other * In electronic ...
through the character * ring ** –
overring In mathematics, an overring ''B'' of an integral domain ''A'' is a subring of the field of fractions ''K'' of ''A'' that contains ''A'': i.e., A \subseteq B \subseteq K. For instance, an overring of the integers is a ring in which all elements are ...
* superscript curls ** –
apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
** –
inverted apostrophe Inverse or invert may refer to: Science and mathematics * Inverse (logic), a type of conditional sentence which is an immediate inference made from another conditional sentence * Additive inverse (negation), the inverse of a number that, when a ...
** –
reversed apostrophe Reversal may refer to: * Medical reversal, when a medical intervention falls out of use after improved clinical trials demonstrate its ineffectiveness or harmfulness. * Reversal (law), the setting aside of a decision of a lower court by a higher ...
** –
hook above A hook is a tool consisting of a length of material, typically metal, that contains a portion that is curved or indented, such that it can be used to grab onto, connect, or otherwise attach itself onto another object. In a number of uses, one e ...
( vi, dấu hỏi) ** –
horn Horn most often refers to: *Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound ** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various a ...
( vi, dấu móc) * subscript curls ** – undercomma ** –
cedilla A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ...
** – hook, left or right, sometimes superscript ** – ogonek * double marks (over or under two base characters) ** – double breve ** –
tie bar A tie clip (also tie slide, tie bar, or tie clasp) is a clothing accessory that is used to clip a tie to the underlying shirt front, preventing it from swinging and ensuring that the tie hangs straight, resulting in a neat, uniform appearance ...
or top ligature ** – double circumflex ** – longum ** – double tilde * double sub/superscript diacritics ** –
double cedilla A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * ...
** –
double ogonek A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * ' ...
** – double diaeresis ** –
double ypogegrammeni A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * ' ...
The tilde, dot, comma,
titlo Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol initially used in early Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "", "title" (compare dated English ''tittle'' ...
, apostrophe, bar, and colon are sometimes diacritical marks, but also have other uses. Not all diacritics occur adjacent to the letter they modify. In the Wali language of Ghana, for example, an apostrophe indicates a change of vowel quality, but occurs at the beginning of the word, as in the dialects ''’Bulengee'' and ''’Dolimi''. Because of vowel harmony, all vowels in a word are affected, so the scope of the diacritic is the entire word. In
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel not ...
scripts, like those used to write Hindi and Thai, diacritics indicate vowels, and may occur above, below, before, after, or around the consonant letter they modify. The tittle (dot) on the letter ''i'' or the letter ''j'', of the Latin alphabet originated as a diacritic to clearly distinguish ''i'' from the minims (downstrokes) of adjacent letters. It first appeared in the 11th century in the sequence ''ii'' (as in ), then spread to ''i'' adjacent to ''m, n, u'', and finally to all lowercase ''i''s. The ''j'', originally a variant of ''i'', inherited the tittle. The shape of the diacritic developed from initially resembling today's acute accent to a long flourish by the 15th century. With the advent of Roman type it was reduced to the round dot we have today. Several languages of eastern Europe use diacritics on both consonants and vowels, whereas in western Europe digraphs are more often used to change consonant sounds. Most languages in Europe use diacritics on vowels, aside from English where there are typically none (with some exceptions).


Diacritics specific to non-Latin alphabets


Arabic

* (ئ ؤ إ أ and stand alone ء) : indicates a glottal stop. * (ــًــٍــٌـ) () symbols: Serve a grammatical role in
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
. The sign ـً is most commonly written in combination with alif, e.g. . * (ــّـ) : Gemination (doubling) of consonants. * (ٱ) : Comes most commonly at the beginning of a word. Indicates a type of that is pronounced only when the letter is read at the beginning of the talk. * (آ) : A written replacement for a that is followed by an alif, i.e. (). Read as a glottal stop followed by a long , e.g. are written out respectively as . This writing rule does not apply when the alif that follows a is not a part of the stem of the word, e.g. is not written out as as the stem does not have an alif that follows its . * (ــٰـ) ''superscript '' (also "short" or "dagger alif": A replacement for an original alif that is dropped in the writing out of some rare words, e.g. is not written out with the original alif found in the word pronunciation, instead it is written out as . * (In Arabic: also called ): ** (ــَـ) (a) ** (ــِـ) (i) ** (ــُـ) (u) ** (ــْـ) (no vowel) * The or vowel points serve two purposes: ** They serve as a phonetic guide. They indicate the presence of short vowels (, , or ) or their absence (). ** At the last letter of a word, the vowel point reflects the inflection case or conjugation mood. *** For nouns, The is for the nominative, for the accusative, and for the genitive. *** For verbs, the is for the imperfective, for the perfective, and the is for verbs in the imperative or jussive moods. * Vowel points or should not be confused with consonant points or () – one, two or three dots written above or below a consonant to distinguish between letters of the same or similar
form Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form also refers to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data * ...
.


Greek

These diacritics are used in addition to the acute, grave, and circumflex accents and the diaeresis: * –
iota subscript The iota subscript is a diacritic mark in the Greek alphabet shaped like a small vertical stroke or miniature iota placed below the letter. It can occur with the vowel letters eta , omega , and alpha . It represents the former presence of an ...
() * –
rough breathing In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, ...
( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma, la, spīritus asper): aspiration * – smooth (or soft) breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma, la, spīritus lēnis): lack of aspiration


Hebrew

* Niqqud ** –
Dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of mod ...
** –
Mappiq The mappiq (, also ''mapiq'', ''mapik'', ''mappik'', lit. "causing to go out") is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It is part of the Masoretes' system of niqqud (vowel points), and was added to Hebrew orthography at the same time. It takes ...
** –
Rafe In Hebrew orthography the rafe or raphe ( he, רָפֶה, , meaning "weak, limp") is a diacritic (), a subtle horizontal overbar placed above certain letters to indicate that they are to be pronounced as fricatives. It originated with the T ...
** –
Shin dot Shin (also spelled Šin (') or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin , Hebrew Shin , Aramaic Shin , Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Shin (in abjadi order, 13th in modern order). Its sound value is a voi ...
(at top right corner) ** –
Sin dot Shin (also spelled Šin (') or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin , Hebrew Shin , Aramaic Shin , Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Shin (in abjadi order, 13th in modern order). Its sound value is a voic ...
(at top left corner) ** –
Shva Shva or, in Biblical Hebrew, shĕwa ( he, שְׁוָא) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots () beneath a letter. It indicates either the phoneme (shva na', mobile shva) or the complete absence of a vowel (/ Ø/) (shva na ...
** – Kubutz ** – Holam ** –
Kamatz Kamatz or qamatz ( he, label=Modern Hebrew, קָמָץ, ; alternatively ) is a Hebrew niqqud (vowel) sign represented by two perpendicular lines (looking like an uppercase T) underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it usually indicates the pho ...
** –
Patakh Pataḥ ( he, פַּתָּח ', , Biblical Hebrew: ') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the " sound in the English word ''far'' an ...
** –
Segol Segol (modern he, סֶגּוֹל, ; formerly , ''səḡôl'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign that is represented by three dots forming an upside down equilateral triangle "ֶ ". As such, it resembles an upside down therefore sign (a becaus ...
** –
Tzeire Tzere (also spelled ''Tsere'', ''Tzeirei'', ''Zere'', ''Zeire'', ''Ṣērê''; modern he, צֵירֵי, , sometimes also written ; formerly ''ṣērê'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by two horizontally-aligned dots "◌ֵ" un ...
** –
Hiriq Hiriq ( he, חִירִיק '  ) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a single dot underneath the letter. In Modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is similar to the "ee" sound in the English word ''deep'' and is transliter ...
*
Cantillation Cantillation is the ritual chanting of prayers and responses. It often specifically refers to Jewish Hebrew cantillation. Cantillation sometimes refers to diacritics used in texts that are to be chanted in liturgy. Cantillation includes: * Chant ...
marks do not generally render correctly; refer to Hebrew cantillation#Names and shapes of the ta'amim for a complete table together with instructions for how to maximize the possibility of viewing them in a web browser * Other ** – Geresh ** – Gershayim


Korean

The diacritics 〮 and 〯 , known as Bangjeom (), were used to mark pitch accents in Hangul for Middle Korean. They were written to the left of a syllable in vertical writing and above a syllable in horizontal writing.


Sanskrit and Indic


Syriac

* A dot above and a dot below a letter represent , transliterated as ''a'' or ''ă'', * Two diagonally-placed dots above a letter represent , transliterated as ''ā'' or ''â'' or ''å'', * Two horizontally-placed dots below a letter represent , transliterated as ''e'' or ''ĕ''; often pronounced and transliterated as ''i'' in the East Syriac dialect, * Two diagonally-placed dots below a letter represent , transliterated as ''ē'', * A dot underneath the ''Beth'' represent a soft sound, transliterated as ''v'' * A tilde (~) placed under ''Gamel'' represent a sound, transliterated as ''j'' * The letter ''Waw'' with a dot below it represents , transliterated as ''ū'' or ''u'', * The letter ''Waw'' with a dot above it represents , transliterated as ''ō'' or ''o'', * The letter ''Yōḏ'' with a dot beneath it represents , transliterated as ''ī'' or ''i'', * A
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
(~) under ''Kaph'' represent a sound, transliterated as ''ch'' or ''č'', * A semicircle under ''Peh'' represents an sound, transliterated as ''f'' or ''ph''. In addition to the above vowel marks, transliteration of Syriac sometimes includes ''ə'', ''e̊'' or superscript ''e'' (or often nothing at all) to represent an original Aramaic schwa that became lost later on at some point in the development of Syriac. Some transliteration schemes find its inclusion necessary for showing spirantization or for historical reasons.


Non-alphabetic scripts

Some non-alphabetic scripts also employ symbols that function essentially as diacritics. * Non-pure
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
s (such as
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
script) and
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel not ...
s use diacritics for denoting vowels. Hebrew and Arabic also indicate consonant doubling and change with diacritics; Hebrew and Devanagari use them for foreign sounds. Devanagari and related abugidas also use a diacritical mark called a '' virama'' to mark the absence of a vowel. In addition, Devanagari uses the moon-dot ''
chandrabindu Chandrabindu (IAST: , in Sanskrit) is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Telugu (ఁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other ...
'' ( ँ ) for vowel nasalization. *
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of Indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing sy ...
use several types of diacritics, including the diacritics with alphabetic properties known as Medials and Finals. Although long vowels originally were indicated with a negative line through the Syllabic glyphs, making the glyph appear broken, in the modern forms, a
dot above When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of th ...
is used to indicate vowel length. In some of the styles, a
ring above A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts. Rings Distinct letter The character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring. It is a distinct le ...
indicates a long vowel with a off-glide. Another diacritic, the "inner ring" is placed at the glyph's head to modify to and to Medials such as the "w-dot" placed next to the Syllabics glyph indicates a being placed between the syllable onset consonant and the nucleus vowel. Finals indicate the syllable coda consonant; some of the syllable coda consonants in word medial positions, such as with the "h-tick", indicate the fortification of the consonant in the syllable following it. * The Japanese '' hiragana'' and ''
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fro ...
''
syllabaries In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...
use the ''dakuten'' (◌゛) and ''handakuten'' (◌゜) (in Japanese: 濁点 and 半濁点) symbols, also known as ''nigori'' (濁 "muddying") or ''ten-ten'' (点々 "dot dot") and ''maru'' (丸 "circle"), to indicate voiced consonants or other phonetic changes. * Emoticons are commonly created with diacritic symbols, especially Japanese emoticons on popular
imageboards An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of ...
.


Alphabetization or collation

Different languages use different rules to put diacritic characters in
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letter (alphabet), letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character ...
ical order. French and Portuguese treat letters with diacritical marks the same as the underlying letter for purposes of ordering and dictionaries. The
Scandinavian languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also ...
and the Finnish language, by contrast, treat the characters with diacritics ''å'', ''ä'', and ''ö'' as distinct letters of the alphabet, and sort them after ''z''. Usually ''ä'' (a-umlaut) and ''ö'' (o-umlaut)
sed in Swedish and Finnish sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...
are sorted as equivalent to ''æ'' (ash) and ''ø'' (o-slash)
sed in Danish and Norwegian sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...
Also, ''aa'', when used as an alternative spelling to ''å'', is sorted as such. Other letters modified by diacritics are treated as variants of the underlying letter, with the exception that ''ü'' is frequently sorted as ''y''. Languages that treat accented letters as variants of the underlying letter usually alphabetize words with such symbols immediately after similar unmarked words. For instance, in German where two words differ only by an umlaut, the word without it is sorted first in German dictionaries (e.g. ''schon'' and then ''schön'', or ''fallen'' and then ''fällen''). However, when names are concerned (e.g. in phone books or in author catalogues in libraries), umlauts are often treated as combinations of the vowel with a suffixed ''e''; Austrian phone books now treat characters with umlauts as separate letters (immediately following the underlying vowel). In Spanish, the grapheme ''ñ'' is considered a new letter different from ''n'' and collated between ''n'' and ''o'', as it denotes a different sound from that of a plain ''n''. But the accented vowels ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú'' are not separated from the unaccented vowels ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''u'', as the acute accent in Spanish only modifies stress within the word or denotes a distinction between homonyms, and does not modify the sound of a letter. For a comprehensive list of the collating orders in various languages, see
Collating sequence Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fili ...
.


Generation with computers

Modern computer technology was developed mostly in English-speaking countries, so data formats, keyboard layouts, etc. were developed with a bias favoring English, a language with an alphabet without diacritical marks. Efforts have been made to create
internationalized domain names An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-latin script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Mandarin, simplifie ...
that further extend the English alphabet (e.g., "pokémon.com"). Depending on the
keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...
, which differs amongst countries, it is more or less easy to enter letters with diacritics on computers and typewriters. Some have their own keys; some are created by first pressing the key with the diacritic mark followed by the letter to place it on. Such a key is sometimes referred to as a
dead key A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies ...
, as it produces no output of its own but modifies the output of the key pressed after it. In modern Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems, the keyboard layouts ''US International'' and ''UK International'' feature
dead key A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies ...
s that allow one to type Latin letters with the acute, grave, circumflex, diaeresis/umlaut, tilde, and cedilla found in Western European languages (specifically, those combinations found in the
ISO Latin-1 ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single- byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in ...
character set) directly: + gives ''ë'', + gives ''õ'', etc. On
Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
computers, there are keyboard shortcuts for the most common diacritics; followed by a vowel places an acute accent, followed by a vowel gives an umlaut, gives a cedilla, etc. Diacritics can be composed in most
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...
keyboard layouts, as well as other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, using additional software. On computers, the availability of
code page In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some ...
s determines whether one can use certain diacritics. Unicode solves this problem by assigning every known character its own code; if this code is known, most modern computer systems provide a method to input it. With Unicode, it is also possible to combine
diacritical marks A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
with most characters. However, as of 2019, very few fonts include the necessary support to correctly render character-plus-diacritic(s) for the Latin, Cyrillic and some other alphabets (exceptions includ
Andika
.


Languages with letters containing diacritics

The following languages have letters that contain diacritics that are considered independent letters distinct from those without diacritics.


Latin/Roman letters

Baltic :* Latvian has the following letters: '' ā, ē, ī, ū, č, ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ, š, ž'' :*
Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...
. In general usage, where letters appear with the caron (''č, š'' and ''ž''), they are considered as separate letters from ''c, s'' or ''z'' and collated separately; letters with the ogonek ('' ą, ę, į'' and '' ų''), the macron ('' ū'') and the superdot ('' ė'') are considered as separate letters as well, but not given a unique collation order. Celtic :* Welsh uses the circumflex, diaeresis, acute, and grave accents on its seven vowels ''a, e, i, o, u, w, y'' (hence the composites â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ, ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ẅ, ÿ, á, é, í, ó, ú, ẃ, ý, à, è, ì, ò, ù, ẁ, ỳ). :* Following spelling reforms since the 1970s, Scottish Gaelic uses graves only, which can be used on any vowel ('' à, è, ì, ò, ù''). Formerly acute accents could be used on ''á, ó'' and ''é'', which were used to indicate a specific vowel quality. With the elimination of these accents, the new orthography relies on the reader having prior knowledge of pronunciation of a given word. :* Manx uses the single diacritic ç combined with h to give the digraph (pronounced ) to mark the distinction between it and the digraph (pronounced or ). Other diacritics used in Manx included â, ê, ï, etc. to mark the distinction between two similarly spelled words but with slightly differing pronunciation. :*
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
uses only acute accents to mark long vowels, following the 1948 spelling reform. Lenition is indicated using an overdot in Gaelic type: in Roman type, a suffixed is used. :* Breton does not have a single orthography (spelling system), but uses diacritics for a number of purposes. The diaeresis is used to mark that two vowels are pronounced separately and not as a diphthong/digraph. The circumflex is used to mark long vowels, but usually only when the vowel length is not predictable by phonology. Nasalization of vowels may be marked with a tilde, or following the vowel with the letter <ñ>. The plural suffix -où is used as a unified spelling to represent a suffix with a number of pronunciations in different dialects, and to distinguish this suffix from the digraph which is pronounced as . An apostrophe is used to distinguish c'h, pronounced as the digraph is used in other Celtic languages, from the French-influenced digraph ch, pronounced . Finno-Ugric :*
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...
has a distinct letter '' õ'', which contains a tilde. Estonian "dotted vowels" ''ä'', ''ö'', ''ü'' are similar to German, but these are also distinct letters, not like German umlauted letters. All four have their own place in the alphabet, between ''w'' and ''x''. Carons in ''š'' or ''ž'' appear only in foreign proper names and
loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
. Also these are distinct letters, placed in the alphabet between ''s'' and ''t''. :* Finnish uses dotted (umlauted) vowels (''ä'' and ''ö''). As in Swedish and Estonian, these are regarded as individual letters, rather than vowel + umlaut combinations (as happens in German). It also uses the characters ''å'', ''š'' and ''ž'' in foreign names and loanwords. In the Finnish and Swedish alphabets, ''å'', ''ä'' and ''ö'' collate as separate letters after ''z'', the others as variants of their base letter. :* Hungarian uses the umlaut, the acute and double acute accent (unique to Hungarian): (''ö, ü''), (''á, é, í, ó, ú'') and (''ő, ű''). The acute accent indicates the long form of a vowel (in case of ''i/í'', ''o/ó'', ''u/ú'') while the double acute performs the same function for ''ö'' and ''ü''. The acute accent can also indicate a different sound (more open, like in case of ''a/á'', ''e/é''). Both long and short forms of the vowels are listed separately in the
Hungarian alphabet The Hungarian alphabet () is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language. The alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with several added variations of letters. The alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO b ...
, but members of the pairs ''a/á, e/é, i/í, o/ó, ö/ ő, u/ú'' and ''ü/ ű'' are collated in dictionaries as the same letter. :* Livonian has the following letters: ''ā, ä, ǟ, , ē, ī, ļ, ņ, ō, ȯ, ȱ, õ, ȭ, ŗ, š, ț, ū, ž''. Germanic :* Faroese uses acutes and other special letters. All are considered separate letters and have their own place in the alphabet: '' á'', '' í'', '' ó'', '' ú'', '' ý'' and '' ø''. :* Icelandic uses acutes and other special letters. All are considered separate letters, and have their own place in the alphabet: '' á'', '' é'', '' í'', '' ó'', '' ú'', '' ý'', and '' ö''. :*
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
and Norwegian use additional characters like the o-slash '' ø'' and the a-overring '' å''. These letters come after ''z'' and '' æ'' in the order ''ø, å''. Historically, the ''å'' has developed from a ligature by writing a small superscript ''a'' over a lowercase ''a''; if an ''å'' character is unavailable, some Scandinavian languages allow the substitution of a doubled ''a''. The Scandinavian languages collate these letters after z, but have different
collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
standards. :* Swedish uses a-diaeresis ('' ä'') and o-diaeresis ('' ö'') in the place of ash (''æ'') and slashed o ('' ø'') in addition to the a-overring (''å''). Historically, the diaeresis for the Swedish letters ''ä'' and ''ö'', like the
German umlaut The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
, developed from a small Gothic ''e'' written above the letters. These letters are collated after ''z'', in the order ''å, ä, ö''. Romance :* In Asturian, Galician and
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, the character '' ñ'' is a letter and collated between ''n'' and ''o''. :* Asturian uses ( lower case ), and ( lower case ) :*
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
uses four diacritics appearing on vowels (circumflex, acute, grave, diaeresis) and the cedilla appearing in "ç". :*
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...
uses two diacritics appearing on vowels (acute, grave) :* Leonese: could use '' ñ'' or '' nn''. :*
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
uses a
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
with the vowels and and a cedilla with c. :*
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania ** Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
uses a
breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Sl ...
on the letter ''a'' ('' ă'') to indicate the sound schwa , as well as a circumflex over the letters ''a'' ('' â'') and ''i'' ('' î'') for the sound . Romanian also writes a
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
below the letters ''s'' ('' ș'') and ''t'' ('' ț'') to represent the sounds and , respectively. These characters are collated after their non-diacritic equivalent. :*
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
does not have any diacritics: is considered a distinct letter from , not a mutated form of it. Slavic :* The Bosnian, Croatian, and
Serbian Serbian may refer to: * someone or something related to Serbia, a country in Southeastern Europe * someone or something related to the Serbs, a South Slavic people * Serbian language * Serbian names See also * * * Old Serbian (disambiguation ...
Latin alphabets have the symbols '' č'', '' ć'', '' đ'', '' š'' and '' ž'', which are considered separate letters and are listed as such in dictionaries and other contexts in which words are listed according to alphabetical order. They also have one digraph including a diacritic, ''
Dž ( titlecase form; all- capitals form DŽ, lowercase dž) is the seventh letter of the Gaj's Latin alphabet for Serbo-Croatian ( Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian), after D and before Đ. It is pronounced . Dž is a digraph that ...
'', which is also alphabetized independently, and follows '' d'' and precedes '' đ'' in the alphabetical order. The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet has no diacritics, instead it has a grapheme (
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
) for every letter of its Latin counterpart (including Latin letters with diacritics and the digraphs dž, '' lj'' and '' nj''). :* The
Czech alphabet Czech orthography is a system of rules for proper formal writing (orthography) in Czech. The earliest form of separate Latin script specifically designed to suit Czech was devised by Czech theologian and church reformist Jan Hus, the namesake of ...
uses the acute (á é í ó ú ý), caron ( č ď ě ň ř š ť ž), and for one letter ( ů) the ring. (Note that in ď and ť the caron is modified to look rather like an apostrophe.) :* Polish has the following letters: '' ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż''. These are considered to be separate letters: each of them is placed in the alphabet immediately after its Latin counterpart (e.g. ''ą'' between ''a'' and ''b''), ''ź'' and ''ż'' are placed after ''z'' in that order. :* The
Slovak alphabet The first Slovak orthography was proposed by Anton Bernolák (1762–1813) in his ''Dissertatio philologico-critica de litteris Slavorum'', used in the six-volume ''Slovak-Czech-Latin-German-Hungarian Dictionary'' (1825–1927) and used primaril ...
uses the acute (á é í ó ú ý ĺ ŕ), caron (č ď ľ ň š ť ž dž), umlaut (ä) and circumflex accent (ô). All of those are considered separate letters and are placed directly after the original counterpart in the
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letter (alphabet), letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character ...
.http://www.juls.savba.sk/ediela/psp2000/psp.pdf page 12, section I.2 :* The basic
Slovenian alphabet The Slovene alphabet ( sl, slovenska abeceda, or ''slovenska gajica'' ) is an extension of the Latin script used to write Slovene. The standard language uses a Latin alphabet which is a slight modification of the Croatian Gaj's Latin alphabet ...
has the symbols '' č'', '' š'', and '' ž'', which are considered separate letters and are listed as such in dictionaries and other contexts in which words are listed according to alphabetical order. Letters with a
caron A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...
are placed right after the letters as written without the diacritic. The letter ''đ'' may be used in non-transliterated foreign words, particularly names, and is placed after ''č'' and before ''d''. Turkic :*
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
includes the distinct Turkish alphabet letters Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü. :* Crimean Tatar includes the distinct Turkish alphabet letters Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü. Unlike Turkish, Crimean Tatar also has the letter Ñ. :* Gagauz includes the distinct Turkish alphabet letters Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö and Ü. Unlike Turkish, Gagauz also has the letters Ä, Ê Ș and Ț. Ș and Ț are derived from the Romanian alphabet for the same sounds. Sometime the Turkish Ş may be used instead of Ș. :* Turkish uses a ''G'' with a breve ('' Ğ''), two letters with an umlaut ('' Ö'' and '' Ü'', representing two rounded front vowels), two letters with a cedilla ('' Ç'' and '' Ş'', representing the affricate and the fricative ), and also possesses a dotted capital ''İ'' (and a dotless lowercase ''ı'' representing a high unrounded back vowel). In Turkish each of these are separate letters, rather than versions of other letters, where dotted capital ''İ'' and lower case ''i'' are the same letter, as are dotless capital ''I'' and lowercase ''ı''. Typographically, ''Ç'' and ''Ş'' are sometimes rendered with a subdot, as in ''Ṣ''; when a hook is used, it tends to have more a comma shape than the usual cedilla. The new Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, and Gagauz alphabets are based on the Turkish alphabet and its same diacriticized letters, with some additions. :* Turkmen includes the distinct Turkish alphabet letters Ç, Ö, Ş and Ü. In addition, Turkmen uses A with diaeresis ('' Ä'') to represent , N with caron ('' Ň'') to represent the
velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
, Y with acute ('' Ý'') to represent the palatal approximant , and Z with caron ('' Ž'') to represent . Other :* Albanian has two special letters Ç and Ë upper and lowercase. They are placed next to the most similar letters in the alphabet, c and e correspondingly. :*
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international commun ...
has the symbols '' ŭ'', '' ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ'' and '' ŝ'', which are included in the alphabet, and considered separate letters. :* Filipino also has the character '' ñ'' as a letter and is collated between n and o. :* Hawaiian uses the kahakō ( macron) over vowels, although there is some disagreement over considering them as individual letters. The kahakō over a vowel can completely change the meaning of a word that is spelled the same but without the kahakō. :* Kurdish uses the symbols Ç, Ê, Î, Ş and Û with other 26 standard Latin alphabet symbols. :*
Lakota Lakota may refer to: * Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: * Lakota, Iowa * Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County * La ...
alphabet uses the
caron A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...
for the letters ''č'', ''ȟ'', ''ǧ'', ''š'', and ''ž''. It also uses the
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed cha ...
for stressed vowels á, é, í, ó, ú, áŋ, íŋ, úŋ. :* Malay uses some diacritics such as ''á, ā, ç, í, ñ, ó, š, ú''. Uses of diacritics was continued until late 19th century except ''ā'' and ''ē''. :* Maltese uses a C, G, and Z with a dot over them (Ċ, Ġ, Ż), and also has an H with an extra horizontal bar. For uppercase H, the extra bar is written slightly above the usual bar. For lowercase H, the extra bar is written crossing the vertical, like a ''t'', and not touching the lower part ( Ħ, ħ). The above characters are considered separate letters. The letter 'c' without a dot has fallen out of use due to redundancy. 'Ċ' is pronounced like the English 'ch' and 'k' is used as a hard c as in 'cat'. 'Ż' is pronounced just like the English 'Z' as in 'Zebra', while 'Z' is used to make the sound of 'ts' in English (like 'tsunami' or 'maths'). 'Ġ' is used as a soft 'G' like in 'geometry', while the 'G' sounds like a hard 'G' like in 'log'. The digraph 'għ' (called ''għajn'' after the
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
letter name ''ʻayn'' for غ) is considered separate, and sometimes ordered after 'g', whilst in other volumes it is placed between 'n' and 'o' (the Latin letter 'o' originally evolved from the shape of Phoenician ''ʻayin'', which was traditionally collated after Phoenician ''nūn''). :* The
romanization of Syriac The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with ...
uses the altered letters of. '' Ā, Č, , Ē, Ë, Ġ, , Ō, Š,
Ṣ (minuscule: ṣ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from an S with the addition of a dot below the letter. Its uses include: * In the Alvarez/Hale orthography of the Tohono Oʼodham language to represent retroflex (Akimel O'odham a ...
, , Ū, Ž'' alongside the 26 standard Latin alphabet symbols. :* Vietnamese uses the horn diacritic for the letters ''ơ'' and ''ư''; the
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
for the letters ''â'', ''ê'', and ''ô''; the
breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Sl ...
for the letter ''ă''; and a bar through the letter ''đ''. Separately, it also has á, à, ả, ã and ạ, the five tones used for vowels besides the flat tone 'a'.


Cyrillic letters The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...

:*
Belarusian Belarusian may refer to: * Something of, or related to Belarus * Belarusians, people from Belarus, or of Belarusian descent * A citizen of Belarus, see Demographics of Belarus * Belarusian language * Belarusian culture * Belarusian cuisine * Byelor ...
and Uzbek Cyrillic have a letter '' ў''. :* Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian have the letter '' й''. :* Belarusian and
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
have the letter '' ё''. In Russian, this letter is usually replaced by '' е'', although it has a different pronunciation. The use of ''е'' instead of ''ё'' does not affect the pronunciation. ''Ё'' is always used in children's books and in dictionaries. A minimal pair is все (''vs'e'', "everybody" pl.) and всё (''vs'o'', "everything" n. sg.). In Belarusian the replacement by ''е'' is a mistake; in Russian, it is permissible to use either ''е'' or ''ё'' for ''ё'' but the former is more common in everyday writing (as opposed to instructional or juvenile writing). :* The
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...
Ukrainian alphabet has the letters '' ґ'', '' й'' and '' ї''. Ukrainian
Latynka The Ukrainian Latin alphabet ( Ukrainian: Українська латиниця, tr. ''Ukrainska latynytsia'' or Латинка, tr. ''Latynka'') is the form of the Latin script used for writing, transliteration and retransliteration of Ukraini ...
has many more. :*
Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Ma ...
has the letters '' ќ'' and '' ѓ''. :* In Bulgarian and
Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Ma ...
the possessive pronoun ѝ (''ì'', "her") is spelled with a grave accent in order to distinguish it from the conjunction и (''i'', "and"). :* The acute accent above any vowel in Cyrillic alphabets is used in dictionaries, books for children and foreign learners to indicate the word stress, it also can be used for disambiguation of similarly spelled words with different lexical stresses.


Diacritics that do not produce new letters


English

English is one of the few European languages that does not have many words that contain diacritical marks. Instead, digraphs are the main way the Modern English alphabet adapts the Latin to its phonemes. Exceptions are unassimilated foreign loanwords, including borrowings from
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
(and, increasingly,
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, like ''jalapeño'' and ''piñata''); however, the diacritic is also sometimes omitted from such words. Loanwords that frequently appear with the diacritic in English include ''café'', ''résumé'' or ''resumé'' (a usage that helps distinguish it from the verb ''resume''), ''soufflé'', and ''naïveté'' (see '' English terms with diacritical marks''). In older practice (and even among some orthographically-conservative modern writers), one may see examples such as ''élite'', ''mêlée'' and ''rôle.'' English speakers and writers once used the diaeresis more often than now in words such as ''coöperation'' (from Fr. ''coopération''), ''zoölogy'' (from Grk. ''zoologia''), and ''seeër'' (now more commonly ''see-er ''or simply'' seer'') as a way of indicating that adjacent vowels belonged to separate syllables, but this practice has become far less common. '' The New Yorker'' magazine is a major publication that continues to use the diaeresis in place of a hyphen for clarity and economy of space. A few English words, out of context, can only be distinguished from others by a diacritic or modified letter, including ''exposé'', ''lamé'', ''maté'', ''öre'', ''øre'', ''pâté'', and ''rosé''. The same is true of ''résumé,'' alternatively ' but, nevertheless, it is regularly spelled ''resume''. In a few words, diacritics that did not exist in the original have been added for disambiguation, as in ''maté'' (from Sp. and Port. ''mate''), ''saké'' (the standard Romanization of the Japanese has no accent mark), and '' Malé'' (from Dhivehi މާލެ), to clearly distinguish them from the English words ''mate'', ''sake'', and ''male''. The acute and grave accents are occasionally used in poetry and lyrics: the acute to indicate stress overtly where it might be ambiguous (''rébel'' vs. ''rebél'') or nonstandard for metrical reasons (''caléndar''), the grave to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced (''warnèd,'' ''parlìament''). In certain personal names such as '' Renée'' and '' Zoë'', often two spellings exist, and the preference will be known only to those close to the person themselves. Even when the name of a person is spelled with a diacritic, like ''
Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted i ...
'', this may be dropped in English-language articles, and even in official documents such as passports, due either to carelessness, the typist not knowing how to enter letters with diacritical marks, or technical reasons ( California, for example, does not allow names with diacritics, as the computer system cannot process such characters). They also appear in some worldwide company names and/or trademarks, such as '' Nestlé'' or ''
Citroën Citroën () is a French automobile brand. The "Automobiles Citroën" manufacturing company was founded in March 1919 by André Citroën. Citroën is owned by Stellantis since 2021 and previously was part of the PSA Group after Peugeot acquired ...
''.


Other languages

The following languages have letter-diacritic combinations that are not considered independent letters. *
Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans grad ...
uses a diaeresis to mark vowels that are pronounced separately and not as one would expect where they occur together, for example ''voel'' (to feel) as opposed to ''voël'' (bird). The circumflex is used in ''ê, î, ô'' and ''û'' generally to indicate long
close-mid A close-mid vowel (also mid-close vowel, high-mid vowel, mid-high vowel or half-close vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one ...
, as opposed to
open-mid An open-mid vowel (also mid-open vowel, low-mid vowel, mid-low vowel or half-open vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one thi ...
vowels, for example in the words ''wêreld'' (world) and ''môre'' (morning, tomorrow). The acute accent is used to add emphasis in the same way as underlining or writing in bold or italics in English, for example ''Dit is jóú boek'' (It is your book). The grave accent is used to distinguish between words that are different only in placement of the stress, for example ''appel'' (apple) and ''appèl'' (appeal) and in a few cases where it makes no difference to the pronunciation but distinguishes between homophones. The two most usual cases of the latter are in the sayings ''òf... òf'' (either... or) and ''nòg... nòg'' (neither... nor) to distinguish them from ''of'' (or) and ''nog'' (again, still). *
Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which toda ...
uses a diacritical horn over ''p, q, t, k, ch''. *
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
has the following composite characters: ''à, ç, é, è, í, ï, ó, ò, ú, ü, l·l''. The acute and the grave indicate stress and vowel height, the cedilla marks the result of a historical palatalization, the diaeresis indicates either a
hiatus Hiatus may refer to: * Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure * Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy *''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes'' * G ...
, or that the letter ''u'' is pronounced when the graphemes ''gü, qü'' are followed by ''e'' or ''i'', the interpunct (·) distinguishes the different values of ''ll/l·l''. * Some orthographies of Cornish such as
Kernowek Standard Kernowek Standard (KS, ''Standard Cornish''), its initial version spelt Kernowak Standard, is a variety of the spelling of revived Cornish. It has two specifications, the first of which was published as a draft proposal in March 2007, and the s ...
and
Unified Cornish Unified Cornish (UC) (''Kernewek Uny '', ''KU'') is a variety of the Cornish language of the Cornish revival. Developed gradually by Robert Morton Nance during and before the 1930s, it derived its name from its standardisation of the variant spe ...
use diacritics, while others such as
Kernewek Kemmyn Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish or "KK") is a variety of the revived Cornish language. Kernewek Kemmyn was developed, mainly by Ken George in 1986, based upon George's earlier doctoral thesis on the phonological history of Cornish. It takes muc ...
and the
Standard Written Form The Standard Written Form or SWF ( kw, Furv Skrifys Savonek) of the Cornish language is an orthography standard that is designed to "provide public bodies and the educational system with a universally acceptable, inclusive, and neutral orthograph ...
do not (or only use them optionally in teaching materials). * Dutch uses the diaeresis. For example, in ''ruïne'' it means that the ''u'' and the ''i'' are separately pronounced in their usual way, and not in the way that the combination ''ui'' is normally pronounced. Thus it works as a separation sign and not as an indication for an alternative version of the ''i''. Diacritics can be used for emphasis (''érg koud'' for ''very'' cold) or for disambiguation between a number of words that are spelled the same when context doesn't indicate the correct meaning (''één appel'' = one apple, ''een appel'' = an apple; ''vóórkomen'' = to occur, ''voorkómen'' = to prevent). Grave and acute accents are used on a very small number of words, mostly loanwords. The ç also appears in some loanwords. * Faroese. Non-Faroese accented letters are not added to the Faroese alphabet. These include ''é'', ''ö'', ''ü'', ''å'' and recently also letters like ''š'', ''ł'', and ''ć''. * Filipino has the following composite characters: ''á, à, â, é, è, ê, í, ì, î, ó, ò, ô, ú, ù, û''. The actual use of diacritics for Filipino is, however, uncommon, and is meant only to distinguish between homonyms with different stresses and meanings that either occur near each other in a text or to aid the reader in ascertaining its otherwise ambiguous meaning. The letter eñe is due to the Spanish alphabet and too, is considered a separate letter. The diacritics appears in
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
and names if Spanish orthography is observed. * Finnish. Carons in ''š'' and ''ž'' appear only in foreign proper names and loanwords, but may be substituted with ''sh'' or ''zh'' if and only if it is technically impossible to produce accented letters in the medium. Contrary to Estonian, ''š'' and ''ž'' are not considered distinct letters in Finnish. *
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
uses five diacritics. The grave (''accent grave'') marks the sound when over an e, as in ''père'' ("father") or is used to distinguish words that are otherwise homographs such as ''a''/''à'' ("has"/"to") or ''ou''/''où'' ("or"/"where"). The
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
(''accent aigu'') is only used in "é", modifying the "e" to make the sound , as in ''étoile'' ("star"). The
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
(''accent circonflexe'') generally denotes that an S once followed the vowel in Old French or Latin, as in ''fête'' ("party"), the Old French being ''feste'' and the Latin being ''festum''. Whether the circumflex modifies the vowel's pronunciation depends on the dialect and the vowel. The
cedilla A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ...
(''cédille'') indicates that a normally hard "c" (before the vowels "a", "o", and "u") is to be pronounced , as in ''ça'' ("that"). The diaeresis diacritic (french: tréma) indicates that two adjacent vowels that would normally be pronounced as one are to be pronounced separately, as in ''Noël'' ("Christmas"). * Galician vowels can bear an acute (''á, é, í, ó, ú'') to indicate stress or difference between two otherwise same written words (''é'', 'is' vs. ''e'', 'and'), but the diaeresis is only used with ''ï'' and ''ü'' to show two separate vowel sounds in pronunciation. Only in foreign words may Galician use other diacritics such as ''ç'' (common during the Middle Ages), ''ê'', or ''à''. *
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
uses the three umlauted characters ''ä'', ''ö'' and ''ü''. These diacritics indicate vowel changes. For instance, the word ''Ofen'' "oven" has the plural ''Öfen'' . The mark originated as a superscript ''e''; a handwritten blackletter ''e'' resembles two parallel vertical lines, like a diaeresis. Due to this history, "ä", "ö" and "ü" can be written as "ae", "oe" and "ue" respectively, if the umlaut letters are not available. *
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
has many various diacritic marks known as '' niqqud'' that are used above and below script to represent vowels. These must be distinguished from
cantillation Cantillation is the ritual chanting of prayers and responses. It often specifically refers to Jewish Hebrew cantillation. Cantillation sometimes refers to diacritics used in texts that are to be chanted in liturgy. Cantillation includes: * Chant ...
, which are keys to pronunciation and syntax. * The International Phonetic Alphabet uses diacritic symbols and characters to indicate phonetic features or secondary articulations. *
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
uses the acute to indicate that a vowel is
long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...
: ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú''. It is known as ''síneadh fada'' "long sign" or simply ''fada'' "long" in Irish. In the older Gaelic type, overdots are used to indicate lenition of a consonant: ''ḃ'', ''ċ'', ''ḋ'', ''ḟ'', ''ġ'', ''ṁ'', ''ṗ'', ''ṡ'', ''ṫ''. *
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...
mainly has the
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
and the
grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as gravey ...
(''à'', ''è''/''é'', ''ì'', ''ò''/''ó'', ''ù''), typically to indicate a stressed syllable that would not be stressed under the normal rules of pronunciation but sometimes also to distinguish between words that are otherwise spelled the same way (e.g. "e", and; "è", is). Despite its rare use, Italian orthography allows the circumflex (î) too, in two cases: it can be found in old literary context (roughly up to 19th century) to signal a syncope (fêro→fecero, they did), or in modern Italian to signal the contraction of ″-ii″ due to the plural ending -i whereas the root ends with another -i; e.g., s. demonio, p. demonii→demonî; in this case the circumflex also signals that the word intended is not demoni, plural of "demone" by shifting the accent (demònî, "devils"; dèmoni, "demons"). *
Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...
uses the
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
,
grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as gravey ...
and
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
in dictionaries to indicate stress types in the language's pitch accent system. * Maltese also uses the grave on its vowels to indicate stress at the end of a word with two syllables or more:– lowercase letters: à, è, ì, ò, ù ; capital letters: À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù *
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
makes use of macrons to mark long vowels. * Occitan has the following composite characters: ''á, à, ç, é, è, í, ï, ó, ò, ú, ü, n·h, s·h''. The acute and the grave indicate stress and vowel height, the cedilla marks the result of a historical palatalization, the diaeresis indicates either a
hiatus Hiatus may refer to: * Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure * Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy *''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes'' * G ...
, or that the letter ''u'' is pronounced when the graphemes ''gü, qü'' are followed by ''e'' or ''i'', and the interpunct (·) distinguishes the different values of ''nh/n·h'' and ''sh/s·h'' (i.e., that the letters are supposed to be pronounced separately, not combined into "ny" and "sh"). *
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
has the following composite characters: ''à, á, â, ã, ç, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú''. The acute and the circumflex indicate stress and vowel height, the grave indicates crasis, the tilde represents nasalization, and the cedilla marks the result of a historical lenition. * Acutes are also used in Slavic language dictionaries and textbooks to indicate lexical stress, placed over the vowel of the stressed syllable. This can also serve to disambiguate meaning (e.g., in Russian писа́ть (''pisáť'') means "to write", but пи́сать (''písať'') means "to piss"), or "бо́льшая часть" (the biggest part) vs "больша́я часть" (the big part). *
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
uses the acute and the diaeresis. The acute is used on a vowel in a stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to "break up" a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
as in ''tío'' (pronounced , rather than as it would be without the accent). Moreover, the acute can be used to distinguish words that otherwise are spelled alike, such as ''si'' ("if") and ''sí'' ("yes"), and also to distinguish interrogative and exclamatory pronouns from homophones with a different grammatical function, such as ''donde/¿dónde?'' ("where"/"where?") or ''como/¿cómo?'' ("as"/"how?"). The acute may also be used to avoid typographical ambiguity, as in ''1 ó 2'' ("1 or 2"; without the acute this might be interpreted as "1 0 2". The diaeresis is used only over ''u'' (''ü'') for it to be pronounced in the combinations ''gue'' and ''gui,'' where ''u'' is normally silent, for example ''ambigüedad.'' In poetry, the diaeresis may be used on ''i'' and ''u'' as a way to force a hiatus. As foreshadowed above, in nasal ''ñ'' the
tilde The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
(squiggle) is not considered a diacritic sign at all, but a composite part of a distinct glyph, with its own chapter in the dictionary: a glyph that denotes the 15th letter of the Spanish alphabet. * Swedish uses the
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
to show non-standard stress, for example in (café) and (résumé). This occasionally helps resolve ambiguities, such as ''ide'' (hibernation) versus ''idé'' (idea). In these words, the acute is not optional. Some proper names use non-standard diacritics, such as
Carolina Klüft Carolina Evelyn Klüft (; born 2 February 1983) is a retired Swedish track and field athlete who competed in the heptathlon, triple jump, long jump, and pentathlon. She was an Olympic Champion, having won the heptathlon title in 2004. She was a ...
and Staël von Holstein. For foreign loanwords the original accents are strongly recommended, unless the word has been infused into the language, in which case they are optional. Hence ''crème fraîche'' but ''ampere''. Swedish also has the letters ''å'', ''ä'', and ''ö'', but these are considered distinct letters, not ''a'' and ''o'' with diacritics. * Tamil does not have any diacritics in itself, but uses the
Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as ...
2, 3 and 4 as diacritics to represent aspirated, voiced, and voiced-aspirated consonants when Tamil script is used to write long passages in Sanskrit. * Thai has its own system of diacritics derived from Indian numerals, which denote different tones. * Vietnamese uses the acute (''dấu sắc''), the grave (''dấu huyền''), the tilde (''dấu ngã''), the underdot (''dấu nặng'') and the hook above (''dấu hỏi'') on vowels as tone indicators. * Welsh uses the circumflex, diaeresis, acute, and grave on its seven vowels ''a, e, i, o, u, w, y''. The most common is the circumflex (which it calls ''to bach'', meaning "little roof", or ''acen grom'' "crooked accent", or ''hirnod'' "long sign") to denote a long vowel, usually to disambiguate it from a similar word with a short vowel. The rarer grave accent has the opposite effect, shortening vowel sounds that would usually be pronounced long. The acute accent and diaeresis are also occasionally used, to denote stress and vowel separation respectively. The ''w''-circumflex and the ''y''-circumflex are among the most commonly accented characters in Welsh, but unusual in languages generally, and were until recently very hard to obtain in word-processed and HTML documents.


Transliteration

Several languages that are not written with the Roman alphabet are transliterated, or romanized, using diacritics. Examples: *
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
has several romanisations, depending on the type of the application, region, intended audience, country, etc. many of them extensively use diacritics, e.g., some methods use an underdot for rendering emphatic consonants (ṣ, ṭ, ḍ, ẓ, ḥ). The macron is often used to render long vowels. š is often used for , ġ for . *
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
has several romanizations that use the umlaut, but only on ''u'' (''ü''). In
Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
, the four tones of Mandarin Chinese are denoted by the macron (first tone), acute (second tone), caron (third tone) and grave (fourth tone) diacritics. Example: ''ā, á, ǎ, à''. * Romanized
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
( Rōmaji) occasionally uses macrons to mark long vowels. The Hepburn romanization system uses macrons to mark
long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
, and the Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki systems use a
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
. * Sanskrit, as well as many of its descendants, like Hindi and
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
, uses a lossless romanization system,
IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
. This includes several letters with diacritical markings, such as the macron (ā, ī, ū), over- and underdots (ṛ, ḥ, ṃ, ṇ, ṣ, ṭ, ḍ) as well as a few others (ś, ñ).


Limits


Orthographic

Possibly the greatest number of combining diacritics ''required'' to compose a valid character in any Unicode language is 8, for the "well-known grapheme cluster in Tibetan and Ranjana scripts" or . It is consists of: # # # # # # # # # An example of rendering, may be broken depending on browser:


Unorthographic/ornamental

Some users have explored the limits of rendering in web browsers and other software by "decorating" words with multiple nonsensical diacritics per character. The result is called "
Zalgo text Zalgo text, also known as cursed text due to the nature of its use, is digital text that has been modified with numerous combining characters, Unicode symbols used to add diacritics above or below letters, to appear frightening or glitchy. Named ...
". The composed bogus characters and words can be copied and pasted normally via the system clipboard. An example of rendering:


List of diacritics in Unicode

Diacritics for Latin script in Unicode:


See also

*
Latin-script alphabets The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics used to represe ...
*
Alt code On personal computers with numeric keypads that use Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows, many characters that do not have a dedicated key combination on the keyboard may nevertheless be entered using the Alt code (the Alt numpad input m ...
* :Letters with diacritics *
Collating sequence Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fili ...
*
Combining character In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks (including combining accents). Unicode also ...
*
Compose key A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol. For insta ...
* English terms with diacritical marks *
Heavy metal umlaut A metal umlaut is a diacritic that is sometimes used gratuitously or decoratively over letters in the names of mainly hard rock or heavy metal bands—for example, those of Blue Öyster Cult, Queensrÿche, Motörhead, the Accüsed, Mötley Crüe ...
* ISO/IEC 8859 8-bit extended-Latin-alphabet European character encodings * Latin alphabet *
List of Latin letters This is a list of letters of the Latin script. The definition of a Latin-script letter for this list is a character encoded in the Unicode Standard that has a script property of 'Latin' and the general category of 'Letter'. An overview of the ...
* List of precomposed Latin characters in Unicode *
List of U.S. cities with diacritics This is a list of U.S. cities whose official names have diacritics. Alaska * Utqiaġvik American Samoa * Āfono * Ālega * 'Āmanave * Āmouli * Aūa * Fagasā * Faleāsao * Lumā * Tāfuna California * La Cañada Flintridg ...
* Romanization * wikt:Appendix:English words with diacritics


Notes


References


External links


Context of Diacritics , A research project

Diacritics Project

Unicode


* ttp://www.elisanet.fi/mlang/strip.html Notes on the use of the diacritics, by Markus Lång
Entering International Characters (in Linux, KDE)

Standard Character Set for Macintosh
PDF at Adobe.com {{Latin script * Punctuation Typography