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
| ¨ | ◌̈ | 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
| Usage | Language | Letters | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central vowel | Albanian (Manastir (current) alphabet) | Ëë /ə/ | |
| Kazakh (2019 and 2021 alphabets, as well as Kazinform's romanization) | Üü /ʉ/ | Unaccented Uu stands for /ʊ/ in the 2019 alphabet and Kazinform's romanization, and for /ʊw/ and /w/ in the 2021 alphabet.[3] | |
| Moro | Ëë /ˈəː/ | This letter represents a "long or stressed ‘ə’",[4] but the phonemicity of it is contested.[5] The orthography for Moro did not have capital letters originally.[4] | |
| 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.[6] Note that N̈n̈ is not a precomposed letter. |
| Diphthong | Kazakh (Kazinform's romanization) | Ïï /əj/ | This romanizations also used Iı for /ə/ and İi for /ɪ/.[3] |
| 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.[7] |
| 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/ | ||
| Kazakh (2019 and 2021 alphabets, as well as Kazinform's romanization) | Ää /æ/, Öö /œ/ | Unaccented Aa and Oo stand for /ɑ/ and /o/ respectively.[3] | |
| 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,[8] or it is simply due to no tone marks being used in the given text.[9] Note that these tone values are based on the Beijing dialect.[10] | |
| Slovak | Ää /æ~ɛ/ | [æ] is dialectal pronunciation, with most speakers merging it with the phoneme /ɛ/ or /a/.[11] | |
| Swedish | Ää /ɛ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/ | The umlaut evolved from the letter e in the digraphs ae[12] and oe.[13] 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 diaeresis, the Ii or Uu would stand for a semivowel.[14] |
| 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.[15] 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/ | Diaeresis 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.[14] |
| 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.[16] | |
| 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.[17] Note that there is no precomposed form of capital T̈. |
Diaeresis/Umlaut in Phonetic Transcription
| 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).[18] |
Diaeresis/Umlaut in Conlangs
| 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.[19] |
| 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/.[20] | |
| 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
- ↑ Diaeresis, Diaeresis, History at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Diaeresis, Umlaut, History at Wikipedia.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Kazakh alphabets at Wikipedia. See also Kazakh language, Phonology on Wikipedia.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Guest, Elizabeth. 1997. Moro Phonology.
- ↑ Blench, Roger. 2005. A dictionary of the Moro language of the Nuba hills, Sudan .
- ↑ Malagasy language, Diacritics at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Tahitian language, Phonology at Wikipedia. The source is not entirely clear regarding the word ïa, but it seems to be pronounced /iːa/.
- ↑ Pinyin, Numerals in place of tone marks at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Pinyin at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Mandarin Chinese, Tones at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Slovak phonology at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Ä at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Ö at Wikipedia.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Catalan alphabet, Diaeresis at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Welsh orthography at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Spanish orthography, Special and modified letters at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Taw, Tāʼ marbūṭah at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Relative articulation, Centralized at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Lhueslue, Romanization at FrathWiki.
- ↑ Songulda language, Romanization and pronunciation at FrathWiki.
