Concept
Diaeresis (diacritic)
Overview
Diaeresis ( dy-ERR-ə-siss, -EER-) is a diacritical mark consisting of two dots (◌̈) that indicates that two adjacent vowel letters are separate syllables – a vowel hiatus (also called a diaeresis) – rather than a digraph or diphthong.
It consists of a two dots diacritic placed over a letter, generally a vowel.
The diaeresis diacritic indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form a digraph and be pronounced as one sound, are instead to be read as separate vowels in two syllables. For example, in the spelling "coöperate", the diaeresis reminds the reader that the word has four syllables, co-op-er-ate, not three, *coop-er-ate. In British English this usage has been considered obsolete for many years, and in US English, although it persisted for longer, it is now considered archaic as well. Nevertheless, it is still used by the US magazine The New Yorker. In English language texts it is perhaps most familiar in the loan words naïve, Noël and Chloë, and is also used officially in the name of the island Teän and of Coös County. Languages such as Dutch, Afrikaans, Catalan, French, Galician, Greek, and Spanish make regular use of the diaeresis. (In some Germanic and other languages, the umlaut diacritic has the same appearance but a different function.)
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In like manner the various phenomena due to what is called interference of light, severally result from the periodic agreement and disagreement of etherial undulations—undulations which, by alternately intensifying and neutralizing each other, produce intervals of increased and diminished light. On the sea-shore may be noted sundry instances of compound rhythm.
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Diaeresis is.
The _period_, or complete sentence, is usually composed of four divisions, which are called _members_, (or _colons_) that it may properly fill the ear, and be neither longer nor shorter than is requisite for that purpose. But it sometimes, or rather frequently happens, that a sentence either falls short of, or exceeds the limits of a regular period, to prevent it from fatiguing the ear on the one hand, or…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators
States what Diaeresis is.
But these unlikenesses are not sufficient to hide a general community of organization. A greater contrast of structure exists between these modern languages of Western Europe, and the classic languages. Differentiation into abstract and concrete elements, which is shown by the substitution of auxiliary words for inflections, has produced a higher specialization, distinguishing these languages as a group from the…
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Volume 1
Close in meaning to Diaeresis; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Diaeresis (diacritic)
Related ideas
- French language
- German language
- Greek language
- Herodotus
- Ancient Greek
- Random House
- Dutch language
- Paris
- Portuguese language
- Spanish language
- The New Yorker
- Vowel
- Welsh language
- Digraph (orthography)
- Hellenistic period
- Classics
- Loanword
- English language
- Taygetus
Place in the tradition
Part of Alphabetical order.