Talk:Diacritic

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[edit] Important miscellaneous fixes needed for/to page

~~Ok Number 1 importance someone with linguistics skills put the pronunciation of the word [[diacritic]] and [[diacritics]] in IPA please & thank you~~ --Antiedman 01:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] the pronunciation of Diacritic

no one fixed it so i did it my self bahhh--Antiedman 21:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The bar

I have changed the reference to bar (punctuation) to bar (diacritics). The reason for this is that I cannot think of any language which uses the vertical bar | as a punctuation mark, but the bar can be a diacritic: think of the Polish and Lithuanian barred-l ƚ. I know the characters barred-b, barred-d, barred-i, barred-u, etc. also exist, as well as barred-lambda and so on. — Jor 20:40, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ogonek

1. Why there's no mention about the use of ogonek in Polish language?
2. There's no 'barred-l' in Polish, it's 'striked-l': try '\l{}' command in TeX. The difference is slightly but it's a difference after all. — User:212.14.13.203

Ogonek is mentioned as a diacritic, and the article ogonek lists the Polish usage. As for the barred-l in Polish, I'm adding it. Jor 03:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] keyboard layout US International

This needs correcting or more precise explanation: In modern Microsoft Windows operating systems, the keyboard layout US International allows one to type almost all diacritics directly: "+e gives ë, ~+o gives õ etc.. In addition to this, the layout provides many 'special characters' behind the AltGr modifier: AltGr+t is þ, AltGr+z is æ, etc.. For example, Windows NT does not allow this without special software, and I doubt XP does this either.Wikibob 23:39, 2004 Mar 12 (UTC)

Works on both 2k and XP without special software: I entered those characters from an (US English locale) XP Pro workstation with the US International keyboard. I can't test NT right now, but IIRC it also works there as long as UniScribe is installed. Jor 23:55, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

yes works on xp but does not support any alphabet other than far western European languges ie. only Germanic & Romance Languages So I actually had to make my own with a free program downloded from Microsoft

in my version I used the Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks so that i could type a charecter of the Latin/Roman alphabet and then the mark like x then ̃ yet most fonts don't fully support this system but I found that Arial Unicode MS does--Antiedman 05:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] barred/stroked l

Lithuanian does not have barred/stroked l. Perhaps you are confusing it with Belarussian Lacinka or Sorbian(s). Anyway, barred-l and stroked-l are considered just glyph variations, see e.g. the Tanacross language orthography where it is called barred-l but looks identical to polish ł.

[edit] Diacritics in Japanese?

Should the Japanese dakuten (゛) and handakuten ( ゜) symbols be noted? They certainly function as diacritics (see Hiragana) for details, but it could be argued that they're added to syllables, not letters... Jpatokal 05:14, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Somebody just added abjads and abugidas, so I guess these are also OK. Added. Jpatokal 16:03, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Middle dot

Recently User:OwenBlacker added middle dot to Category:Diacritics. I reverted, but he re-reverted, explained that he did so because it was listed in Diacritic, and asked that it be discussed over here. I don't believe that a middle dot is a diacritic, any more than a hyphen or apostrophe is a diacritic: it's not added to a letter, it's placed between letters to separate them (in Catalan), and outside of Catalan it's a punctuation mark when it's used at all. — Gwalla | Talk 19:48, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for being quite so terse about it earlier (though I didn't realise I'd been crabby enough to re-revert it, sorry :o) Basically, I added Category:Diacritics to every one of the list on Diacritics and didn't really want to take a position on the matter cos I was rather stressed at work. To be honest, I'm inclined to agree with Gwalla: in Catalan, surely the middle dot is being used as punctuation, not as a diacritic? — OwenBlacker 20:16, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

I think the Catalan middle dot is neither a diacritic (it's not applied to a letter to give it a different but related sound), and it's not punctuation (it's related to the sound of a particular word, not grammar / syntax / sentences). It's almost a letter but not quite. I would most closely compare it to the apostrophe or even the hyphen in English. Since the apostrophe and hyphen are regarded as punctuation then it seems fair to put the middle dot in the same category even though it doesn't seem accurate of itself. — Hippietrail 03:39, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I also noticed the Category:Diacritics changes of User:OwenBlacker but decided not to comment until I see the result. Now I take the opportunity to comment:

I agree, that the Catalan middle dot isn't a diacritic in the strict sense. I'm not quite sure, that punctuation fits. The difference betwen "l·l" and "ll" is more like ligated versus non-ligated "ff" in classical typography. In german "Schaffell", the "ff" should not be ligated, as each of them belongs to a different subword, but in "Affe", they should be ligated.
The same sign can be considered a diacritic and a non-diacritic by different languages. COMBINING RING ABOVE is seen as diacritic in Czech, but the LATIN LETTER A WITH COMBINING RING ABOVE is seen as a distinct, uncomposed letter in scandinavian languages.
Also the category contains both the diacritic marks and some characters composed with them. This looked a bit strange to me in the first moment.

I'm only commenting here and don't see the need for any specific action. But I assume, the first scandinavion editor seeing the "Å" in this category, will do something about it. -- Pjacobi 20:51, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Removed the following:

Note that North Germanic languages do not use grammatical umlauts.

That statement is simply false. Io 22:27, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Only to clarify: I assume the author of the sentence above did mean, that north germanic languages don't use the umlaut for forming different cases etc of a word, like in German:

Ein Kamm - Zwei Kämme

So your are saying this isn't the case in, e.g. Swedish? Can you give an example?

Pjacobi 22:56, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The two North Germanic languages I know well enough to give examples from, Icelandic and Danish, certainly use grammatical umlaut.

Examples from Danish: barn-børn, fader-fædre, moder-mødre.

Icelandic uses them extensively. For instance, every neutral noun with an a in its stem, forms a plural with an ö, e. g. land-lönd. A more colourful example is the declension of köttur (cat), which in goes (in the singular): köttur-kött-ketti-kattar, showing two umlauts (a>ö and a>e). The other languages also have them, but as I only have a passive knowledge of those, I can't give you examples. Cheers Io 23:22, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your examples. Pjacobi 00:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think the umlaut function in Scandinavian languages generally is quite an archaic function, although it probably was more common in Old Norse, as Icelandic indicates. Some Swedish examples: hand-händer(hand-hands), fot-fötter(foot-feet), moder-mödrar(mother-mothers), fader-fäder(father-fathers), lång-längre-längst(long-longer-longest)

You're welcome. It probably isn't relevant, but I looked the vowel changes up in a grammar following this discussion. Icelandic has the usual ablaut, of course, but as for umlauts, there are 8 different kinds, counting the sounds which cause them. They are as follows (and I'm just writing this for my own amusement - perhaps I'll incorporate the information in Old Norse or Icelandic one day). In each case, I'll note, whether the change is active, grammatically (that is, if the umlaut/fracture shows up in declination - I'll not mention word derivation). The comment "applies to Old Icelandic" means that later sound changes make the point obscure. If you want more examples, I'll be glad to look them up.

A-umlaut

i>e
u>o

I-umlaut

e>i Active
a>e Active
á>æ Active
o>ø (Applies to Old Icelandic)
ó>œ (or Modern Icelandic ó>æ) Active
u>y Active
ú>ý Active
au>ey Active
jú>ý Active
jó>ý Active
ǫ>ø (Applies to Old Icelandic)

IR-umlaut, J-umlaut and R-umlaut

The same changes as in I-umlaut

G-k-umlaut

a>e Active

U-umlaut

a>ǫ (or Modern Icelandic a>ö) Active
á>ǭ (Applies to Old Icelandic)
e>ø (Applies to Old Icelandic)
i>y
í>ý

W-umlaut

The same changes as in U-umlaut

Additionally we have fracture, where

e>ja Active
e>jǫ (or Modern Icelandic e>jö). Active

Cheers Io 17:18, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Some words are transcribed, others are not

Why are писа́ть and пи́сать transcribed while все and всё are not? --Hhielscher 17:46, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Now they are. Thanks for pointing that out. —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 16:54 Z

[edit] No ë in German

I'll remove this:

Further, a mark may be diacritical in one language, but not in another; for example, in French, e and ë are considered the same letter, while in German, they are considered to be the separate letters. (In the former case, the mark is a diaeresis, while in the latter, it is an umlaut.)

as ë does not exist in German...

I'll replace it with:

Further, a mark may be diacritical in one language, but not in another; for example, in Catalan, Portuguese or Spanish, u and ü are considered the same letter, while in Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish or Azeri they are considered to be the separate letters.

--Viktor 6 July 2005 12:06 (UTC)

[edit] Missing diacritics on edit screen

Does anyone know why most of the diacritics have been removed from below the edit screen (hachek, caron, Greek letters, etc.)? This should be corrected. No one responds about this issue on any pages I have posted on. Badagnani 05:29, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of diacritics

Can anyone tell me what was the first recorded usage of diacritics? Which language were diacritics (rather than new letters) first used for? Who had the idea? Pajast suggested it was Jan Hus (see Talk:Czech alphabet), but nobody seems sure about this. Mattwhiteski 12:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

well, Egyptian hieroglyphs had phonetic complements and determinatives, that served like a diacritics, but the vertical stroke identifying a logogram is even closer to our diacritics. rado 14:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritic "descender"

Hey, does anyone know if descender is the correct name for the diacritic that occurs on the Қ in the Tajik alphabet among others? If so should it be added to this page ? - FrancisTyers 15:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subdot in Old Irish?

The subdot is claimed to have been used in Old Irish. Certainly, the superdot has always been used when using the uncial script, from the Old Irish period to the present day. So presumably the author meant superdot, and not subdot. Perhaps - I don't know - the subdot was also used, although I've never heard the suggestion. But if subdot is mentioned for Old Irish, certainly superdot should be too.

If there are no objections (I'll check back in about a week), I'll shift the 'Old Irish' reference to the superdot, and include a reference to the superdot's use in uncial-script (modern) Irish.--Ataltane 10:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] š and ž in Finnish?

Since when does Finnish collate š and ž as separate letters after z? å, ä and ö are separate letters, collated after z, but I've always thought š and ž were collated as s and z. JIP | Talk 12:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

They will use those letters if they're present in foreign names, but Finnish itself doesn't contain š or ž. Many people in English will use umlauts when discussing German names, but that doesn't mean umlauts are present in English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.146.46.247 (talk) 16:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Circumflex

Isn't the circumflex "diacritic" an accent, like the grave accent, acute accent and double acute accent? I think i have always seen it as "circumflex accent", not circumflex diacritic... -- Jokes Free4Me 08:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Accent marks are diacritics. FilipeS 16:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Non-diacritic usage" is silly in an article on Diacritics

I understand why people have done this — it's the old story that some languages count accented letters as new "letters", rather than "letter + diacritic" combinations. But the way to deal with that is to explain, in the paragraph for each language, which symbols composed of diacritics, if any, are considered individual letters. FilipeS 16:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, this article shouldn't even attempt to list the uses of the various diacritics in every possible language. That should be left for the specific articles on each diacritic. As for collation issues, and accented letters that are treated as letters of their own, that should be left for Alphabets derived from the Latin, IMO. FilipeS 23:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Letters versus diacritics - more consistency needed

In some languages, letters with diacritics in them -- such as ü, for instance -- are considered letter + diacritic combinations, while in others they are regarded as new, individual letters. Such conventions are relevant because they may have implications for collation. Unfortunately, the current version of this article (and others) does not make this distinction well. I propose the following:

In this article, include only those diacritics which are analysed as separate graphemes from the letters on which they are used.
For special letters which include diacritics in them, but are treated as a unit, use Alphabets derived from the Latin.

FilipeS 16:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hyphen

Here's written:

hyphen - in English, hyphens can be used to break words between syllables, to resolve ambiguities in pronunciation:

repair (fix) compared to re-pair (pair again).

Kuringgai becomes Ku-ring-gai.

I haven't seen in this usage nothing to treat hyphen as diacritic. What do others think? --Koryakov Yuri 14:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabetization or collation

The a-ring letter in Swedish should have a ring over the a, not a dot. (å <- like so). 
I can provide you with huge amounts of source material for this claim, but you can start by
visiting nationalencyklopedin.se - NE being considered an authorative Swedish dictionary.
Check http://ne.se/jsp/customer/login_about.jsp where the first headline has an å in it.

Before I submitted this I just noticed that the display of the å, which is written entirely correctly on the wiki page, is just weird (and wrong) looking. I am using Swedish localized Firefox 2.0.0.2, with standard settings. Can this be fixed? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.233.119.185 (talk) 11:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Accent mark?

First, I've never heard of any such thing as an "accent mark" - only an "accent". The Concise Oxford Dictionary has an entry for "accent" (a noun, one of its definitions being "a mark..." etc) but not for an "accent mark". Also, if we were to believe that "accent mark" was the correct term, surely we'd refer to an "acute accent mark", but even Wikipedia admits that we say "acute accent". Secondly, an accent and a diacritic are not the same thing. Some marks are correctly called diacritics but are not accents. The diaeresis as used in English or French would be an example. (A diaeresis looks the same as an umlaut, but it would be incorrect to call it an umlaut.) -86.140.131.100

Does it have an entry for "diacritic mark", or for "diacritic"? FilipeS 21:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

"Diacritic". But it has "diacritic" as both a noun and an adjective (along with "diacritical", also an adjective). "Accent", by contrast, is just a noun (and also a verb, but not an adjective). The relevant definition of "accent" (noun) is "a mark on a letter or word indicating pitch, stress, or the quality of a vowel". Since an accent is defined as a mark, that means that "accent mark" would be a tautology. -86.140.131.100 21:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The acute is also a mark, and yet it's often referred to as an acute accent. FilipeS 21:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English Language's usage of Diacritics

This article says diacritics are used in English Language, from mainly French orgin words. If this is true, English Wikipedia contradicts that fact. Scandinavian & Slavic orgin names have diacritics in the English Wikipedia as much as French words. Which is it? GoodDay 21:27, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

English usually did not keep the diacritics of the words it borrowed from Scandinavian languages, contrary to what it (sometimes) did with French loanwords. As for Slavic loanwords, does English have half as much of those as it has from French?... FilipeS 21:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recipé in English language?

How can “recipé” have an accent It’s certainly not a french word. Latin “recipere” gave “receipt” and “recipe” in English, whereas it gave “recevoir” in French (no ‘p’; the ‘p’ became ‘v’ long before accents came in the game). 82.67.107.44 16:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. I have removed that example from the article. FilipeS 21:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritics in Tibetan?

Tibetan uses four diacritics to denote vowel signs. These are Naro Gigu Shabkyu and drengbo(?); These denote the vowel sounds "o" "i" "u" and "e" respectively. There are also several other diacritics seen in classical writing forms. Would anyone with a better understanding care to add this to the list, please?

[edit] Obscure Unicode characters with diacritics.

There are a few Unicode characters for which I can't find any references as to how they are used. Examples are Ḧ, Ẍ, Ẅ, Ṽ, ẘ, ẙ (the last two exist only in lowercase form.) Anyone know anything about these characters? --66.167.78.139 (talk) 10:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transliteration of non-latin scripts

One use of diacritical marks in the latin alphabet that has not yet been addressed here is in transliterating non-latin scripts (like Devanagari or Bengali) into latin scripts. There are international norms for such transliteration. śāntiḥ = peace, for instance. Devadaru (talk) 09:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)