Diacritic

Diacritical marks or diacritics (singular diacritic; Greek διακρίνειν to " differentiate " ) are attached to small letter characters such as dots, lines, hooks, arcs or circles that indicate a different letter from the unmarked pronunciation or intonation and the over - or letter are set to go in some cases also by the letter. The so modified character is sometimes considered the same, sometimes as a separate letter. The diacritical marks allow the expansion of an alphabet without new case characters must be invented. The use of certain diacritical marks is often limited to single or related languages ​​, thus they can serve as a recognition of these languages.

Especially in the many variants of the Latin alphabet can be found diacritics, but also in the Arab and Hebrew Scriptures and in the Indian writings to indicate the vocalization in scientific Transliterationssystemen as well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

One and the same diacritical marks can be in different languages ​​have different function. Also sometimes varies the appearance of diacritics. Thus, in Ancient Greek, the circumflex, the Perispomene also be written ~.

Not all fonts used for the expansion of the alphabet diacritics. There are, for example, in the Cyrillic alphabet letters for many stand-alone sounds that are played in languages ​​with Latin script by diacritical marks, such ш, š for the sound [ ʃ ] and ж for the sound [ ʒ ] in other languages ​​or ž written.

To be distinguished from the diacritics are the ligatures, for example, the German ß, representing a fusion of two letters to a new. Part diacritics of ligatures are formed, wherein the sub- character is transformed over time in a diacritical mark. The German umlaut about originated from a over a, o or u written small e

Name

The names usually refer to the shape of the character, but also partly a function of the character that it can have in a language. This name is also used when it has a different function in another language.

Examples:

• Acute accent ( actually " sharp, rising accent ", for example, in Pīnyīn romanization of the Chinese, the French but for a closed vowel, the Portuguese and the Dutch translation for an open vowel, in the Czech, Hungarian and Irish for a long vowel ).
• The Trema originally referred to the separate pronunciation of two vowels, as in Greek, French and Dutch (example: Aleutian Islands, Citroën). In Swedish, Turkish and other languages ​​, it assigns a vowel letter to another, brighter pronunciation. The name referred Trema only the form. He in Greek means " point ".

" Diacritical marks " to cross-language use of the term is thus a phenomenon on the material, not on a functional level, as Phon unlike phoneme and graph unlike grapheme.

Diacritics in English

In the New High German spelling there (except in foreign words ) as diacritical marks only the umlaut dots ( diaeresis in ä, ö, ü). They are not to be confused with the Trema about to ë and ï.

Since View the umlaut character deviates from the base letter wording and thus meaning-differentiating graphemes are - example: Cool / hollow - the umlauts to be taken in German as separate letters and have their own names: Ä [ ɛ ː ], Ö [ ø ː ], T [y ː ]. But you do not have a place in the alphabet and there are classified in different ways:

• Such as A, O and U in encyclopedias and dictionaries
• As Ae, Oe and Ue in lists of names (for example, telephone books ) in Germany
• To Az, Oz, Uz in lists of names in Austria.

For details, see Alphabetical sorting.

Diacritical characters of the Latin alphabet

• Acute (as in é, oo)
• Breve ( half-circle, as in ă, round shape )
• Breve including (as in ḫ )
• Cedilla ( Zedille, cedilla [ Spanish: " little z" ], as in ç )
• Above set cedilla (via comma in, in form like a simple set about closing German quotation marks, the Latvian allografische a variant of the cedilla, as in ģ )
• Double acute accent ( as in ő ) and Doppelgravis (as in ȁ )
• Gravis (as in è )
• Hook, ( Vietnamese: dau hoi, as in A, U, Y)
• Caron ( Haček, Mäkkčeň, Caron, checkmark, as in č, ř, š, ž, pointed shape, in the Czech / Slovak at lowercase letters with ascenders allografisch as apostrophe: ď, ť )
• Horn ( as in O)
• Below set point (Romanian, not identical with the cedilla: as in Ş, ş, Ţ, ţ )
• Kroužek ( ring, Squiggle, circle accent, as ů in Czech and Danish / Norwegian / Swedish AA)
• Macron ( Macron, slash, bar, line length, short overline, as in ā )
• Underscore ( macron underneath as in a)
• Center (as in l · l)
• Ogonek ( Nasalhaken, curved hook, as in ę )
• Point below it ( as in D, T )
• Point about it ( as in ż )
• Slash (as in OO LL)
• Tilde (as in ñ)
• Umlaut (dieresis, umlaut characters such as ë, ü)
• Circumflex (as in â, ê, î )

Diacritical marks in the data processing

Input

On typewriters diacritical marks do not cause any signs feed, the car stops, then the base letter is entered. This input sequence is due to the fact that the reverse would be associated with disproportionate mechanical effort.

This was usually maintained at computer keyboards for the most common in the language diacritical marks to facilitate the transition from the typewriter to the computer. Since the attack of accent keys ( such as ^, ¨, °, ~, `, ') there is no indication occurs, this sometimes called" dead keys, dead keys "or dead keys (English) are referred to. For the stand-alone edition of diacritical characters in the Unicode standard recommends be preceded by basic character -breaking spaces (Unicode U 00 A0 ), eg ' ( freestanding acute ) represented by U 00 A0 U 00 B4.

Many special characters can be entered on the Zifferntastatur> via Alt

Another input method uses a composition key (English: compose, multi -key ), so, for example, on an English keyboard ä generated by the successive operation of the Comp "a key.

Unicode

The Unicode Standard writes the following order: first the base point, then the diacritic.

In many languages, and even more in linguistic texts, the " stacking " of diacritics is common. The Unicode Standard provides that several diacritics in the order of citation from the inside, that is directly on the base character, outward from the base characters off, are added to the base character.

Concrete Unicode fonts and software support stacking any diacritics in varying degrees. There is a need for this advanced font technologies such as OpenType, AAT or Graphite.