Diaeresis and Umlaut

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Diaeresis (known as tréma in French) and umlaut both employ the same character. But there is a difference of use between diaeresis and umlaut. Letters with umlaut stand for completely different sounds than their non-accented counterparts. For example in Swedish Oo represents /u/ while Öö represents /ø/. Diaeresis on the other hand does not change the sound value of a letter, but instead marks that a vowel is not part of a diphthong or digraph. Both are also known under the general name trema.

The diaeresis and umlaut characters have different origins. Diaeresis was borrowed from the Greek alphabet,[1] while umlaut began as a small e placed on top of Aa, Oo or Uu. This e then later evolved into the same shape as diaeresis.[2]

Diaeresis/Umlaut in Unicode

Characters with Diaeresis/Umlaut
¨ ◌̈ Ä ä Ǟ ǟ Ë ë Ḧ ḧ Ï ï Ḯ
U+00A8 U+0308 U+00C4 U+00E4 U+01DE U+01DF U+00CB U+00EB U+1E26 U+1E27 U+00CF ​ U+00EF U+1E2E
Diaeresis Combining Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter A With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter A With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter A With Diaeresis And Macron Latin Small Letter A With Diaeresis And Macron Latin Capital Letter E With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter E With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter H With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter H With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter I With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter I With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter I With Diaeresis And Acute
ḯ Ö ö Ȫ ȫ Ṏ ṏ ẗ Ü ü Ǖ ǖ Ǘ
U+1E2F U+00D6 U+00F6 ​ U+022A U+022B U+1E4E U+1E4F U+1E97 U+00DC ​ U+00FC U+01D5 U+01D6 U+01D7
Latin Small Letter I With Diaeresis And Acute ​ Latin Capital Letter O With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter O With Diaeresis ​ Latin Capital Letter O With Diaeresis And Macron Latin Small Letter O With Diaeresis And Macron Latin Capital Letter O With Tilde And Diaeresis Latin Small Letter O With Tilde And Diaeresis Latin Small Letter T With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Macron Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Macron ​ Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Acute
ǘ Ǚ ǚ Ǜ ǜ Ṻ ṻ Ẅ ẅ Ẍ ẍ Ÿ ÿ
U+01D8 U+01D9 U+01DA U+01DB U+01DC U+1E7A U+1E7B U+1E84 U+1E85 U+1E8C U+1E8D U+0178 U+00FF
Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Acute Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Caron Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Caron Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Grave Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Grave Latin Capital Letter U With Macron And Diaeresis Latin Small Letter U With Macron And Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter W With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter W With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter X With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter X With Diaeresis Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis Latin Small Letter Y With Diaeresis

Diaeresis/Umlaut in Natlangs

Uses of Diaeresis or Umlaut
Usage Language Letters Notes
Central vowel Albanian (Manastir (current) alphabet) Ëë /ə/
Moro Ëë /ˈəː/ This letter represents a "long or stressed ‘ə’",[3] but the phonemicity of it is contested.[4] The orthography for Moro did not have capital letters originally.[3]
Change of place of articulation Malagasy N̈n̈ /ŋ/ This letter is used in some dialects. It may optionally be replaced by Ññ or Ng ng.[5] Note that N̈n̈ is not a precomposed letter.
Disambiguation of homographs Tahitian Ïï /iː/ This letter is only used in the reflexive pronoun ïa to distinguish from some other word, pronounced the same. The letter is barely used nowadays however.[6]
Front version of back vowel (Ää is included here, even though its unaccented version is not a back vowel in all of these languages) Estonian Ää /æ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
Finnish Ää /æ/, Öö /ø/ Usage borrowed from Swedish.
German Ää /ɛ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/ The umlaut evolved from the letter e in the digraphs ae, oe and ue.
Hungarian Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
Icelandic Öö /œ/
Livonian Ää /æ/, Ǟǟ /æː/
Mandarin (Pinyin romanization) Üü /y/, Ǖǖ /y˥/, Ǘǘ /y˧˥/, Ǚǚ /y˨˩˦/, Ǜǜ /˥˩/ Üü without tone markings may stand for the so called neutral tone,[7] or it is simply due to no tone marks being used in the given text.[8] Note that these tone values are based on the Beijing dialect.[9]
Slovak Ää /æ~ɛ/ [æ] is dialectal pronunciation, with most speakers merging it with the phoneme /ɛ/ or /a/.[10]
Swedish Ää /ɛ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/ The umlaut evolved from the letter e in the digraphs ae[11] and oe.[12] Üü is not really a part of the Swedish alphabet, but is regularly used in some loanwords and surnames.
Turkish Öö /œ/, Üü /y/ Oo and Uu stand for /o/ and /u/, respectively.
Hiatus Catalan Ïï /i/, Üü /u/ Diaeresis on an Ii or Uu following another vowel marks that the two vowels are in different syllables. Without diaresis, the Ii or Uu would stand for a semivowel.[13]
French Ëë, Ïï, Üü, Ÿÿ
Welsh Ëë /ɛ, eː/, Ïï /ɪ, iː, ij/, Üü /ɨ̞, ɨː, ɪ, iː/, Ẅẅ /ʊ, uː/, Ÿÿ /ɨ̞, ɨː, ɪ, iː, ə, əː/ The diaeresis is used for marking that a vowel is not part of a diphthong. The diaeresis is sometimes omitted in casual speech. Ïï stands for /ij/ when it is followed by another vowel.[14] Regarding Üü and Ÿÿ: The realizations /ɨ̞, ɨː, ə/ are used in northern dialects and /ɪ, iː, ə, əː/ in southern dialects.
Non-silent vowel Catalan Üü /w/ Diaresis on an Uu that is between Gg or Qq and a front vowel marks that this letter stands for /w/. Otherwise it would be a part of the digraph Gu gu /g/ or Qu qu /k/ that is used before front vowels.[13]
Spanish Üü [w] Diaeresis is used on a Uu between Gg and a front vowel, to show that the Uu is not a silent letter as would otherwise be the case.[15]
Raised vowel Hungarian Ëë /e/ Unaccented Ee stands for /ɛ/. Ëë is not really a part of the Hungarian alphabet however; it is used when writing down spoken or sung language in a dialect that has this phoneme.
Other Arabic (ISO 233 romanization) T̈ẗ /a(t)/ This letter is used for transcribing the Arabic letter ة which is used for a suffix which may or may not include a /t/, depending on context.[16] Note that there is no precomposed form of capital T̈.

Diaeresis/Umlaut in Phonetic Transcription

Uses of diaeresis/umlaut
Use Transcription system Notes
Centralized vowel International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Used for marking that a vowel has (more) centralized place of articulation (than what the base letter implies).[17]

Diaeresis/Umlaut in Conlangs

Uses of Diaeresis or Umlaut
Usage Language Creator Letters Notes
Digraph disambiguation Lhueslue (external romanization) Qwynegold Ëë /e/ The diaeresis is used when /e/ follows another vowel, and signals that these two vowel letters do not form a digraph. These two vowels are pronounced as a diphthong.[18]
Front version of back vowel Qwynegold (Qwadralónia dialect) Qwynegold Ää /æ, ɛ/, Ä́ä́ /æˑ, ɛˑ/, Ā̈ā̈ /æː, ɛː/, Öö /ø, œ/, Ö́ö́ /øˑ, œˑ/, Ō̈ō̈ /øː, œː/ Ä́ä́, Ā̈ā̈, Ö́ö́, Ō̈ō̈ have no precomposed forms.
Songulda (external romanization) Qwynegold Öö /ø/, Üü /y/ Unaccented Oo, Uu stand for /o, u/.[19]
Stress Seebee (external romanization) Qwynegold ȷ̈ /ˈj/ Normally a dot is placed below the first letter of a stressed syllable, but in the case of lower case j, umlaut is used instead because there is not space for a dot neither below or above the letter otherwise. Note that ȷ̈ is not a precomposed letter, but a combination of dotless ȷ and combining diaeresis.

See Also

References

  1. ↑ Diaeresis, Diaeresis, History at Wikipedia.
  2. ↑ Diaeresis, Umlaut, History at Wikipedia.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Guest, Elizabeth. 1997. Moro Phonology.
  4. ↑ Blench, Roger. 2005. A dictionary of the Moro language of the Nuba hills, Sudan .
  5. ↑ Malagasy language, Diacritics at Wikipedia.
  6. ↑ Tahitian language, Phonology at Wikipedia. The source is not entirely clear regarding the word ïa, but it seems to be pronounced /iːa/.
  7. ↑ Pinyin, Numerals in place of tone marks at Wikipedia.
  8. ↑ Pinyin at Wikipedia.
  9. ↑ Mandarin Chinese, Tones at Wikipedia.
  10. ↑ Slovak phonology at Wikipedia.
  11. ↑ Ä at Wikipedia.
  12. ↑ Ö at Wikipedia.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Catalan alphabet, Diaeresis at Wikipedia.
  14. ↑ Welsh orthography at Wikipedia.
  15. ↑ Spanish orthography, Special and modified letters at Wikipedia.
  16. ↑ Taw, Tāʼ marbūṭah at Wikipedia.
  17. ↑ Relative articulation, Centralized at Wikipedia.
  18. ↑ Lhueslue, Romanization at FrathWiki.
  19. ↑ Songulda language, Romanization and pronunciation at FrathWiki.


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