Diaeresis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
This article is about the phonological term. For the diacritic ¨, see Umlaut (diacritic). For the philosophical concept, see diairesis.

In linguistics, diaeresis, or dieresis (US), is the pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong. An example is the first two vowels in cooperate (also spelled co-operate, or dated coöperate). The opposite phenomenon is known as synaeresis.

The word diaeresis comes from Greek διαίρεσις diairesis, noun from verb διαιρεῖν diairein.

Contents

[edit] Orthography

Further information: Umlaut (diacritic)

Diaeresis, or trema from French, is also the name of the diacritic mark ( ¨ ) which indicates the separation of two vowels,[1] as in Noël and naïve. (It looks the same as the umlaut, which changes the sound of a single vowel, as in German schön.)

Phonological diaeresis is sometimes indicated with other diacritics, such as the acute accent in Spanish and Portuguese. For example, the Portuguese words saia [ˈsai̯ɐ] "skirt" and saía [saˈiɐ] "I used to leave" (Brazilian pronunciation) differ in that the sequence /ai/ forms a diphthong in the former (synaeresis), but is a hiatus in the latter (diaeresis).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bringhurst, p 306.

[edit] References

  • Bringhurst, Robert (1992 [2004]). The Elements of Typographic Style, version 3.0. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.

[edit] See also