Editing Diacritic (section)

==Diacritics that do not produce new letters==
[[File:Spanish orthography.jpg|upright=1.35|right|thumb|Blackboard used in class at [[Harvard University|Harvard]] shows students' efforts at placing the [[ü]] and [[acute accent]] diacritic used in [[Spanish orthography]].]]

===English===
{{main article|English terms with diacritical marks}}
[[English alphabet|English]] is one of the few European languages that does not have many words that contain diacritical marks. Instead, digraphs are the main way the Modern English alphabet adapts the Latin to its phonemes. Exceptions are unassimilated foreign loanwords, including borrowings from [[French language|French]] (and, increasingly, [[Spanish language|Spanish]], like ''jalapeño'' and ''piñata''); however, the diacritic is also sometimes omitted from such words. Loanwords that frequently appear with the diacritic in English include ''café'', ''résumé'' or ''resumé'' (a usage that helps distinguish it from the verb ''resume''), ''soufflé'', and ''naïveté'' (see ''[[English terms with diacritical marks]]''). In older practice (and even among some orthographically conservative modern writers), one may see examples such as ''élite'', ''mêlée'' and ''rôle.''

English speakers and writers once used the diaeresis more often than now in words such as ''coöperation'' (from Fr. ''coopération''), ''zoölogy'' (from Grk. ''zoologia''), and ''seeër'' (now more commonly ''see-er ''or simply'' seer'') as a way of indicating that adjacent vowels belonged to separate syllables, but this practice has become far less common. ''[[The New Yorker]]'' magazine is a major publication that continues to use the diaeresis in place of a hyphen for clarity and economy of space.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Norris|first=Mary|title=The Curse of the Diaeresis|url=http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html|magazine=The New Yorker|date=26 April 2012|access-date=18 April 2014}}</ref>

A few English words, often when used out of context, especially in isolation, can only be distinguished from other words of the same spelling by using a diacritic or modified letter. These include ''exposé'', ''lamé'', ''maté'', ''öre'', ''øre'', ''résumé'' and ''rosé.'' In a few words, diacritics that did not exist in the original have been added for disambiguation, as in ''maté'' (''from Sp. and Port.'' mate)'', saké'' (''the standard Romanization of the Japanese has no accent mark'')'', and'' [[Malé]] (''from Dhivehi މާލެ'')'','' to clearly distinguish them from the English words ''mate, sake,'' and ''male.''

The acute and grave accents are occasionally used in poetry and lyrics: the acute to indicate stress overtly where it might be ambiguous (''rébel'' vs. ''rebél'') or nonstandard for metrical reasons (''caléndar''), the grave to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced (''warnèd,'' ''parlìament'').

In certain personal names such as ''[[Renée]]'' and ''[[Zoe (name)|Zoë]]'', often two spellings exist, and the person's own preference will be known only to those close to them. Even when the name of a person is spelled with a diacritic, like ''[[Charlotte Brontë]]'', this may be dropped in English-language articles, and even in official documents such as [[passport]]s, due either to carelessness, the typist not knowing how to enter letters with diacritical marks, or technical reasons ([[California]], for example, does not allow{{clarify|date=February 2024}} names with diacritics, as the computer system cannot process such characters). They also appear in some worldwide company names and/or trademarks, such as ''[[Nestlé]]'' and ''[[Citroën]]''.

===Other languages===
The following languages have letter-diacritic combinations that are not considered independent letters.
* [[Afrikaans]] uses a diaeresis to mark vowels that are pronounced separately and not as one would expect where they occur together, for example ''voel'' (to feel) as opposed to ''voël'' (bird). The circumflex is used in ''ê, î, ô'' and ''û'' generally to indicate long [[Close-mid vowel|close-mid]], as opposed to [[Open-mid vowel|open-mid]] vowels, for example in the words ''wêreld'' (world) and ''môre'' (morning, tomorrow). The acute accent is used to add emphasis in the same way as underlining or writing in bold or italics in English, for example ''Dit is jóú boek'' (It is '''your''' book). The grave accent is used to distinguish between words that are different only in placement of the stress, for example ''appel'' (apple) and ''appèl'' (appeal) and in a few cases where it makes no difference to the pronunciation but distinguishes between homophones. The two most usual cases of the latter are in the sayings ''òf... òf'' (either... or) and ''nòg... nòg'' (neither... nor) to distinguish them from ''of'' (or) and ''nog'' (again, still).
* [[Aymara language|Aymara]] uses a diacritical horn over ''p, q, t, k, ch''.
* [[Catalan alphabet|Catalan]] has the following composite characters: ''à, ç, é, è, í, ï, ó, ò, ú, ü, l·l''. The acute and the grave indicate [[stress (linguistics)|stress]] and [[vowel height]], the cedilla marks the result of a historical [[Palatalization (sound change)|palatalization]], the diaeresis indicates either a [[hiatus (linguistics)|hiatus]], or that the letter ''u'' is pronounced when the graphemes ''gü, qü'' are followed by ''e'' or ''i'', the [[interpunct]] (·) distinguishes the different values of ''{{lang|ca|ll/l·l}}''.
* Some orthographies of [[Cornish language|Cornish]] such as [[Kernowek Standard]] and [[Unified Cornish]] use diacritics, while others such as [[Kernewek Kemmyn]] and the [[Standard Written Form]] do not (or only use them optionally in teaching materials).
* [[Dutch alphabet|Dutch]] uses the diaeresis. For example, in ''ruïne'' it means that the ''u'' and the ''i'' are separately pronounced in their usual way, and not in the way that the combination ''ui'' is normally pronounced. Thus it works as a separation sign and not as an indication for an alternative version of the ''i''. Diacritics can be used for emphasis (''érg koud'' for ''very'' cold) or for disambiguation between a number of words that are spelled the same when context does not indicate the correct meaning (''één appel'' = one apple, ''een appel'' = an apple; ''vóórkomen'' = to occur, ''voorkómen'' = to prevent). Grave and acute accents are used on a very small number of words, mostly loanwords. The ç also appears in some loanwords.<ref>{{cite book|author=van Geloven, Sander|title=Diakritische tekens in het Nederlands|url=http://hellebaard.nl/publicaties/poster/poster-diakritische-tekens-in-het-nederlands-4-stuks/|location=Utrecht|publisher=Hellebaard|year=2012|language=nl|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029192341/http://hellebaard.nl/publicaties/poster/poster-diakritische-tekens-in-het-nederlands-4-stuks/|archive-date=2013-10-29}}</ref>
* [[Faroese alphabet|Faroese]]. Non-Faroese accented letters are not added to the Faroese alphabet. These include ''é'', ''ö'', ''ü'', ''å'' and recently also letters like ''š'', ''ł'', and ''ć''.
* [[Filipino alphabet|Filipino]] has the following composite characters: ''á, à, â, é, è, ê, í, ì, î, ó, ò, ô, ú, ù, û''. Everyday use of diacritics for Filipino is, however, uncommon, and meant only to distinguish between [[homonym]]s between a word with the usual [[penult]]imate stress and one with a different stress placement. This aids both comprehension and pronunciation if both are relatively adjacent in a text, or if a word is itself ambiguous in meaning. The letter ''ñ'' ("''eñe''") is not a ''n'' with a diacritic, but rather collated as a separate letter, one of eight borrowed from Spanish. Diacritics appear in [[Spanish language in the Philippines|Spanish]] [[List of loanwords in Tagalog#Spanish|loanwords]] and [[Filipino name|names]] observing Spanish orthography rules.
* [[Finnish alphabet|Finnish]]. Carons in ''š'' and ''ž'' appear only in foreign proper names and [[loanword]]s, but may be substituted with ''sh'' or ''zh'' if and only if it is technically impossible to produce accented letters in the medium. Contrary to Estonian, ''š'' and ''ž'' are not considered distinct letters in Finnish.
* [[French alphabet|French]] uses five diacritics. The grave (''accent grave'') marks the sound {{IPA|/ɛ/}} when over an e, as in ''père'' ("father") or is used to distinguish words that are otherwise homographs such as ''a''/''à'' ("has"/"to") or ''ou''/''où'' ("or"/"where"). The [[acute accent|acute]] (''accent aigu'') is only used in "é", modifying the "e" to make the sound {{IPA|/e/}}, as in ''étoile'' ("star"). The [[circumflex]] (''accent circonflexe'') generally denotes that an "s" once followed the vowel in Old French or Latin, as in ''fête'' ("party"), the Old French being ''feste'' and the Latin being ''festum''. Whether the circumflex modifies the vowel's pronunciation depends on the dialect and the vowel. The [[cedilla]] (''cédille'') indicates that a normally hard "c" (before the vowels "a", "o", and "u") is to be pronounced {{IPA|/s/}}, as in ''ça'' ("that"). The diaeresis diacritic ({{langx|fr|tréma}}) indicates that two adjacent vowels that would normally be pronounced as one are to be pronounced separately, as in ''Noël'' ("Christmas").
* [[Galician language|Galician]] vowels can bear an acute (''á, é, í, ó, ú'') to indicate stress or difference between two otherwise same written words (''é'', 'is' vs. ''e'', 'and'), but the diaeresis is only used with ''ï'' and ''ü'' to show two separate vowel sounds in pronunciation. Only in foreign words may Galician use other diacritics such as ''ç'' (common during the Middle Ages), ''ê'', or ''à''.
* [[German alphabet|German]] uses the three umlauted characters ''ä'', ''ö'' and ''ü''. These diacritics indicate vowel changes. For instance, the word ''Ofen'' {{IPA|de|ˈoːfən|}} "oven" has the plural ''Öfen'' {{IPA|[ˈøːfən]}}. The mark originated as a superscript ''e''; a handwritten blackletter ''e'' resembles two parallel vertical lines, like a diaeresis. Due to this history, "ä", "ö" and "ü" can be written as "ae", "oe" and "ue" respectively, if the umlaut letters are not available.
* [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]] has many various diacritic marks known as ''[[niqqud]]'' that are used above and below script to represent vowels. These must be distinguished from [[Hebrew cantillation|cantillation]], which are keys to pronunciation and syntax.
* The [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] uses diacritic symbols and characters to indicate phonetic features or secondary articulations.
* [[Irish alphabet|Irish]] uses the acute to indicate that a vowel is [[vowel length|long]]: ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú''. It is known as ''síneadh fada'' "long sign" or simply ''fada'' "long" in Irish. In the older [[Gaelic type]], [[overdot]]s are used to indicate [[lenition]] of a consonant: ''ḃ'', ''ċ'', ''ḋ'', ''ḟ'', ''ġ'', ''ṁ'', ''ṗ'', ''ṡ'', ''ṫ''.
* [[Italian alphabet|Italian]] mainly has the [[acute accent|acute]] and the [[grave accent|grave]] (''à'', ''è''/''é'', ''ì'', ''ò''/''ó'', ''ù''), typically to indicate a stressed syllable that would not be stressed under the normal rules of pronunciation but sometimes also to distinguish between words that are otherwise spelled the same way (e.g. "e", and; "è", is). Despite its rare use, Italian orthography allows the circumflex (î) too, in two cases: it can be found in old literary context (roughly up to 19th century) to signal a [[Syncope (phonetics)|syncope]] (fêro→fecero, they did), or in modern Italian to signal the contraction of ″-ii″ due to the plural ending -i whereas the root ends with another -i; e.g., [[Grammatical number|s.]] demonio, [[plural|p.]] demonii→demonî; in this case the circumflex also signals that the word intended is not demoni, plural of "demone" by shifting the accent (demònî, "devils"; dèmoni, "demons").
* [[Lithuanian alphabet|Lithuanian]] uses the [[Acute accent|acute]], [[Grave accent|grave]] and [[tilde]] in dictionaries to indicate stress types in the language's [[pitch accent]] system.
* [[Maltese alphabet|Maltese]] also uses the grave on its vowels to indicate stress at the end of a word with two syllables or more:– lowercase letters: à, è, ì, ò, ù; capital letters: À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù
* [[Māori language|Māori]] makes use of macrons to mark long vowels.
* [[Occitan alphabet|Occitan]] has the following composite characters: ''á, à, ç, é, è, í, ï, ó, ò, ú, ü, n·h, s·h''. The acute and the grave indicate [[stress (linguistics)|stress]] and [[vowel height]], the cedilla marks the result of a historical [[Palatalization (sound change)|palatalization]], the diaeresis indicates either a [[hiatus (linguistics)|hiatus]], or that the letter ''u'' is pronounced when the graphemes ''gü, qü'' are followed by ''e'' or ''i'', and the [[interpunct]] (·) distinguishes the different values of ''nh/n·h'' and ''sh/s·h'' (i.e., that the letters are supposed to be pronounced separately, not combined into "ny" and "sh").
* [[Portuguese alphabet|Portuguese]] has the following composite characters: ''à, á, â, ã, ç, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú''. The acute and the circumflex indicate stress and vowel height, the grave indicates crasis, the tilde represents nasalization, and the cedilla marks the result of a historical lenition.
* Acutes are also used in [[Slavic language]] dictionaries and textbooks to indicate [[lexical stress]], placed over the vowel of the stressed syllable. This can also serve to disambiguate meaning (e.g., in Russian писа́ть (''pisáť'') means "to write", but пи́сать (''písať'') means "to piss"), or "бо́льшая часть" (the biggest part) vs "больша́я часть" (the big part).
* [[Spanish alphabet|Spanish]] uses the acute and the diaeresis. The acute is used on a vowel in a stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to "break up" a [[diphthong]] as in ''tío'' (pronounced {{IPA|[ˈti.o]}}, rather than {{IPA|[ˈtjo]}} as it would be without the accent). Moreover, the acute can be used to distinguish words that otherwise are spelled alike, such as ''si'' ("if") and ''sí'' ("yes"), and also to distinguish interrogative and exclamatory pronouns from homophones with a different grammatical function, such as ''donde/¿dónde?'' ("where"/"where?") or ''como/¿cómo?'' ("as"/"how?"). The acute may also be used to avoid typographical ambiguity, as in ''1 ó 2'' ("1 or 2"; without the acute this might be interpreted as "1 0 2". The diaeresis is used only over ''u'' (''ü'') for it to be pronounced {{IPA|[w]}} in the combinations ''gue'' and ''gui,'' where ''u'' is normally silent, for example ''ambigüedad.'' In poetry, the diaeresis may be used on ''i'' and ''u'' as a way to force a hiatus. As foreshadowed above, in nasal ''ñ'' the [[tilde]] (squiggle) is not considered a diacritic sign at all, but a composite part of a distinct glyph, with its own chapter in the dictionary: a glyph that denotes the 15th letter of the Spanish alphabet.
* [[Swedish alphabet|Swedish]] uses the [[acute accent|acute]] to show non-standard stress, for example in {{lang|sv|kafé}} (café) and {{lang|sv|resumé}} (résumé). This occasionally helps resolve ambiguities, such as ''ide'' (hibernation) versus ''idé'' (idea). In these words, the acute is not optional. Some proper names use non-standard diacritics, such as [[Carolina Klüft]] and [[Staël von Holstein]]. For foreign loanwords the original accents are strongly recommended, unless the word has been infused into the language, in which case they are optional. Hence ''crème fraîche'' but ''ampere''. Swedish also has the letters ''å'', ''ä'', and ''ö'', but these are considered distinct letters, not ''a'' and ''o'' with diacritics.
* [[Tamil alphabet|Tamil]] does not have any diacritics in itself, but uses the [[Arabic numerals]]<!-- Please confirm it is not using Indian or other numerals--> 2, 3 and 4 as diacritics to represent aspirated, voiced, and voiced-aspirated consonants when Tamil script is used to write long passages in [[Sanskrit]].
* [[Thai alphabet|Thai]] has its [[Thai script#Diacritics|own system of diacritics]] derived from [[Indian numerals]], which denote different [[tone (linguistics)|tones]].
* [[Vietnamese alphabet|Vietnamese]] uses the acute (''dấu sắc''), the grave (''dấu huyền''), the tilde (''dấu ngã''), the underdot (''dấu nặng'') and the hook above (''dấu hỏi'') on vowels as [[Tone (linguistics)|tone]] indicators.
* [[Welsh alphabet|Welsh]] uses the circumflex, diaeresis, acute, and grave on its seven vowels ''a, e, i, o, u, w, y''. The most common is the circumflex (which it calls ''to bach'', meaning "little roof", or ''acen grom'' "crooked accent", or ''hirnod'' "long sign") to denote a long vowel, usually to disambiguate it from a similar word with a short vowel or a semivowel. The rarer grave accent has the opposite effect, shortening vowel sounds that would usually be pronounced long. The acute accent and diaeresis are also occasionally used, to denote stress and vowel separation respectively. The ''w''-circumflex {{char|ŵ}} and the ''y''-circumflex {{char|ŷ}} are among the most commonly accented characters in Welsh, but unusual in languages generally, and were until recently very hard to obtain in word-processed and HTML documents.