A diacritic is any mark, point, or sign added or attached over, under, or through a letter or character to distinguish it from another of similar form, to give it a particular phonetic value, to indicate stress, etc. Accents, carets, hačeks, cedillas, circumflexes, diereses, macrons and tildes are common in such languages as Latvian, Spanish, French, and other European languages, but to a much lesser extent in English.
* A written accent is a small diagonal line used over a vowel; the acute accent (´) and the grave accent (‵) modify vowels or mark stress.
* A caret (^), also known as the circumflex accent, is in the shape of an Indian teepee tent or an inverted “˅”. In French it is placed over a vowel and marks a long vowel sound. In proofreading, the caret symbol is used on written or printed matter to indicate the place where something is to be inserted.
* A haček (˅) or inverted circumflex or wedge is a diacritic placed over certain vowels and consonants to indicate palatalization, like the Latvian letters “Č,” “Š,” “Ž,” and “Dž.” The word haček came into English from the Czech language, where it means little hook.
* A cedilla is a diacritic (¸) in the shape of a hook or tail, which is placed under vowels and consonants to modify their pronunciation. In French there is only one letter written with a cedilla - “Ҫ”, but in Latvian, “Ģ,” “Ķ,” “Ļ,” “Ņ” and “Ŗ.” Note that the French word “façade” in English is written with or without the cedilla.
* A circumflex or circumflex mark is one of several diacritics - (˄), (ᵕ), (~) – which is placed over a vowel in some languages other than English to show hat the vowel is pronounced in a certain way; i.e., the vowel is of a certain quality and long, nasalized and stressed, or pronounced with a rise and fall in pitch. Both the caret and the tilde are circumflex marks.
* A dieresis is a diacritic (‧‧) placed over the second of two adjacent vowels to indicate separate pronunciation, as in one spelling of “naïve,” which in English can also be spelled without the dieresis. In Spanish, it is placed only over the vowel “U” when this comes between “G” and “E” or “I” to show that it is voiced, as in “güero” and “pingüino.” In German, this diacritic is known as the umlaut and placed over a vowel, as “Ä,” “Ö,” “Ü,” to indicate a sound shift.
* A macron is a horizontal mark (¯), not the President of France, used over a vowel to indicate that it has an extended sound or other specified pronunciation. In the Latvian alphabet, “Ā,” “Ē,” “Ī,” and “Ū” stand independently as long vowels and come immediately after the corresponding short vowels without macrons; the letter “O” may have either a short or long vowel sound but is never written with a macron.
* A tilde is a diacritic (~) placed over an “N,” as in Spanish “mañana,” to indicate a palatal nasal sound. “Ñ” in the Spanish alphabet is a separate letter that comes between the letters “N” and “O,” and its name is “Eñe.” Tildes are also used in Portuguese over the vowels “A” and “O” to indicate nasalization.
For more on the subject of diacritics, get in touch with Your Tutor at 67311576 or lang.tutoring@inbox.lv
