phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, hiatus, diaeresis (), or dieresis describes the occurrence of two separate

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

sounds in adjacent syllables with no intervening

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...

. When two vowel sounds instead occur together as part of a single syllable, the result is called a diphthong.

Preference

Some languages do not have diphthongs, except sometimes in rapid speech, or they have a limited number of diphthongs but also numerous vowel sequences that cannot form diphthongs and so appear in hiatus. That is the case of

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, Nuosu, Bantu languages like Swahili, and

Lakota Lakota may refer to: * Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: * Lakota, Iowa * Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County * La ...

. Examples are Japanese () 'blue/green', and Swahili 'purify', both with three syllables.

Avoidance

Many languages disallow or restrict hiatus and avoid it by deleting or assimilating the vowel or by adding an extra consonant.

Epenthesis

A consonant may be added between vowels ( epenthesis) to prevent hiatus. That is most often a

semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the c ...

or a glottal, but all kinds of other consonants can be used as well, depending on the language and the quality of the two adjacent vowels. For example, some

non-rhotic Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic variet ...

dialects of English often insert to avoid hiatus after non-high word-final or occasionally morpheme-final vowels.

Contraction

In Greek and Latin poetry, hiatus is generally avoided although it occurs in many authors under certain rules, with varying degrees of poetic licence. Hiatus may be avoided by elision of a final vowel, occasionally ''prodelision'' (elision of initial vowel),

synizesis Synizesis () is a sound change (metaplasm) in which two originally syllabic vowels (hiatus) are pronounced instead as a single syllable. In poetry, the vowel contraction would often be necessitated by the metrical requirements of the poetic form. ...

(pronunciation of two vowels as one without a change in spelling), or contractions such as αει->ᾷ.

Marking

Diaeresis

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

and French, the second of two vowels in hiatus is marked with a

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

(or ) if otherwise that combination could be interpreted as a diphthong or as having one of the vowels silent. Examples are the Dutch word '' poëzie'' ("poetry") and the French word '' ambiguë'' (feminine form of '' ambigu'', "ambiguous"). This usage is occasionally seen in English (such as ''coöperate'', ''daïs'' and ''reëlect'') but has never been common, and over the last century, its use in such words has been dropped or replaced by the use of a hyphen except in a very few publications, notably ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''.Umlauts in English?
General Questions. Straight Dope Message Board. It is, however, still common in loanwords such as ''naïve'' and ''Noël'' and in the proper names ''Zoë'' and ''Chloë''.

Other ways

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, hiatus between

monophthongs A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...

is usually written with an intervening ''h'', as in "to pull"; "to threaten". In a few words (such as ), the ''h'' represents a consonant that has become silent, but in most cases, it was added later simply to indicate the end of the stem. Similarly, in

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...

, hiatus is written by a number of digraphs: . Some examples include "river"; "day"; "condition". The convention goes back to the

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...

scribal tradition, but it is more consistently applied in Scottish Gaelic: (> ). However, hiatus in Old Irish was usually simply implied in certain vowel digraphs (> ), (> ).

Correption

Correption In Latin and Greek poetry, correption ( la, correptiō , "a shortening") is the shortening of a long vowel at the end of one word before a vowel at the beginning of the next. Vowels next to each other in neighboring words are in hiatus. Homer u ...

is the shortening of a long vowel before a short vowel in hiatus.

References

Phonetics Vowels