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English Terms With Diacritical Marks
English rarely uses diacritics, which are symbols indicating the modification of a letter's sound when spoken. Most of the affected words are in terms imported from other languages. Certain diacritics are often called ''accents''. The only diacritic native to Modern English is the two dots (representing a vowel hiatus): its usage has tended to fall off except in certain publications and particular cases. Proper nouns are not generally counted as English terms except when accepted into the language as an eponym – such as Geiger–Müller tube. Unlike continental European languages, English orthography tends to use digraphs (like "sh", "oo", and "ea") rather than diacritics to indicate more sounds than can be accommodated by the letters of the Latin alphabet. Unlike other systems (such as Spanish orthography) where the spelling indicates the pronunciation, English spelling is highly varied, and diacritics alone would be insufficient to make it reliably phonetic. (See .) T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diacritics
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 ''diacritic'' is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an attributive sense, whereas ''diacritical'' is only an adjective. Some diacritics, such as the acute , grave , and circumflex (all shown above an 'o'), are often called ''accents''. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters. The main use of diacritics in Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. Historically, English has used the diaeresis diacritic to indicate the correct pronunciation of ambiguous words, such as "coöperate", without which the letter sequence could be misinterpreted to be pronounced . Other examples are the acute and grave accents, which can indicate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macron (diacritic)
A macron ( ) is a diacritical mark: it is a straight bar placed above a letter, usually a vowel. Its name derives from Ancient Greek (''makrón'') 'long' because it was originally used to mark long or heavy syllables in Greco-Roman metrics. It now more often marks a long vowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the macron is used to indicate a mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular colon . The opposite is the breve , which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel. Uses Syllable weight In Greco-Roman metrics and in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced and is still widely used in dictionaries and educational materials to mark a long (heavy) syllable. Even relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries are still concerned with indicating only the length (weight) of syllables; that is why most still do not indicate the length of vowels in syllables that are otherwise metrica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Typographic Ligature
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters and used in English and French, in which the letters and are joined for the first ligature and the letters and are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, and are often merged to create (where the tittle on the merges with the hood of the ); the same is true of and to create . The common ampersand, , developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters and (spelling , Latin for 'and') were combined. History The earliest known script Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieratic both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as the Brahmic abugidas and the Germanic bind rune, figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thorn (letter)
Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English Latin alphabet, Old English, Old Norse alphabet, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic orthography, Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic language, Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots, and some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in Middle Ages, medieval Scandinavia but was later replaced with the Digraph (orthography), digraph ''Th (digraph), th,'' except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the runic alphabet, rune in the Elder Futhark and was called ''thorn'' in the Anglo-Saxon and ''thorn'' or ''Jötunn, thurs'' in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter Sho (letter), sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic language, Icelandic. It represented a voiceless dental fricative or its voiced dental fricative, voiced counterpart . However, in mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Alphabet
Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 Letter (alphabet), letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word ''alphabet'' is a Compound (linguistics), compound of ''alpha'' and ''beta'', the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet. The earliest Old English writing during the 5th century used a runic alphabet known as the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, futhorc. The Old English Latin alphabet was adopted from the 7th century onward—and over the following centuries, various letters entered and fell out of use. By the 16th century, the present set of 26 letters had largely stabilised: There are 5 vowel letters and 19 consonant letters—as well as Y and W, which may function as either type. Written English has a large number of Digraph (orthography), digraphs, such as , , , , and . Diacritics are generally not used to write native English words, which is unusual among orthographies used to write the languages of Eu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hook Above
In typesetting, the hook above () is a diacritic mark placed on top of vowels in the Vietnamese alphabet. In shape it looks like a tiny question mark without the dot underneath, or a tiny glottal stop, glottal stop (ʔ). For example, a capital A with a hook is "Ả", and a lower case "u" with a hook is "ủ". The hook is usually written to the right of the circumflex in conventional Vietnamese orthography. If Vietnamese characters are unavailable, it is often replaced by a question mark after the vowel (VIQR encoding). This diacritic functions as a tone (linguistics), tone marker, indicating a "mid falling" tone ('): which is "dipping" (˨˩˥) in Southern Vietnamese or "falling" (˧˩) in Northern Vietnamese; ''see Vietnamese language#Tones 2, Vietnamese language § Regional variation: Tones''. The Southern "dipping" tone is similar to the questioning intonation (linguistics), intonation in English. The hook above can be used as a Tone (linguistics), tone marker, but is not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Åland
Åland ( , ; ) is an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland. Receiving its autonomy by a 1920 decision of the League of Nations, it is the smallest region of Finland by both area () and population (30,541), constituting 0.51% of Finland's land area and 0.54% of its population. Its only official language is Swedish and the capital city is Mariehamn. Åland is situated in an archipelago, called the Åland Islands, at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea. It comprises Fasta Åland, on which 90% of the population resides, and about 6,500 skerries and islands to its east, of which about 60–80 are inhabited. Fasta Åland is separated from the coast of Roslagen in Sweden by of open water to the west. In the east, the Åland archipelago is contiguous with the Finnish archipelago. Åland's only land border is located on the uninhabited skerry of Märket, which it shares with Sweden. From Mariehamn, there is a ferry distance of about to Turku, a coastal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ring (diacritic)
A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts. Rings Distinct letter The character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring. It is a distinct letter in the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Walloon, and Chamorro alphabets. For example, the 29-letter Swedish alphabet begins with the basic 26 Latin letters and ends with the three letters Å, Ä, and Ö. Overring The character Ů (ů) a Latin U with overring, or kroužek is a grapheme in Czech preserved for historic reasons, and represented a vowel shift. For example, the word for "horse" used to be written ''kóň'', which evolved, along with pronunciation, into ''kuoň''. Ultimately, the vowel disappeared completely, and the ''uo'' evolved into ''ů'', modern form ''kůň''. The letter ''ů'' now has the same pronunciation as the letter '' ú'' (long ), but changes to a short ''o'' when a word is morphed (e.g. nom. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek (; 9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer, playwright, critic and journalist. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel '' War with the Newts'' (1936) and play '' R.U.R.'' (''Rossum's Universal Robots'', 1920), which introduced the word ''robot''.Oxford English Dictionary: robot n2 He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Influenced by American pragmatic liberalism, he campaigned in favor of free expression and strongly opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe. Though nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, Čapek never received it. However, several awards commemorate his name, such as the Karel Čapek Prize, awarded every other year by the Czech PEN Club for literary work that contributes to reinforcing or maintaining democratic and humanist values in society. He also played a key role in establishing the Czechoslovak PEN Club as a part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caron
A caron or háček ( ), is a diacritic mark () placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term ''caron'', while linguists prefer the Czech word '. The symbol is common in the Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Samic and Berber language families. Its use differs according to the orthographic rules of a language. In most Slavic and other European languages it indicates present or historical palatalization (e → ě; [] → []), iotation, or postalveolar consonant, postalveolar articulation (c → č; → ). In Salishan languages, it often represents a uvular consonant (x → x̌; [] → ). When placed over vowel symbols, the caron can indicate a contour tone, for instance the falling and then rising tone in the Pinyin romanization of Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese. It is also used to decorate symbols in mathematics, where it is often pronounced ("check"). The caro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tilde
The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in combination with a base letter. Its freestanding form is used in modern texts mainly to indicate approximation. History Use by medieval scribes The tilde was originally one of a variety of marks written over an omitted letter or several letters as a scribal abbreviation (a "mark of contraction"). Thus, the commonly used words ''Anno Domini'' were frequently abbreviated to ''Ao Dñi'', with an elevated terminal with a contraction mark placed over the "n". Such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the scribe's labor and the cost of vellum and ink. Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with contraction marks and other abbreviations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish language, Spanish ', "small ''ceda''", i.e. small "z"), or cedille (from French , ), is a hook or tail () added under certain letters (as a diacritic, diacritical mark) to indicate that their pronunciation is modified. In Catalan language, Catalan (where it is called ), French language, French, and Portuguese language, Portuguese (where it is called a ) it is used only under the letter (to form ), and the entire letter is called, respectively, (i.e. "broken C"), , and (or , colloquially). It is used to mark vowel nasalization in many languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, including Vute language, Vute from Cameroon. This diacritic is not to be confused with the ''ogonek'' (◌̨), which resembles the cedilla but mirrored. It looks also very similar to the Comma#Diacritical_usage, diacritical comma, which is used in the Romanian and Latvian alphabet, and which is misnamed "cedilla" in the Unicode standard. There is substantial overlap between the cedil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
