Common Diacritical Marks Diacritical markings are added to the top or bottom of a letter to indicate appropriate stress, special pronunciation, or unusual sounds not common in the Roman alphabet.
Using Symbols and Diacritical Marks on OS X
A diacritical mark is often used by foreign languages and fireside poets to denote an accent on a letter. For instance, you will be marked down on a French paper for writing apercu instead of aperçu, and where would political theorists be without being able to distinguish between role and rôle?
To type diacritics in a Mac, first hold down the Option key on the keyboard and then strike a regular character key as indicated below. To create a ç and some other characters, this is all you need. Hold down shift as well as option if you want to make a capital Ç. This process is denoted below as Option + c (or C).
For some marks, such as the ´ or the ˆ, a highlighted accent with no letter will appear on your screen at this point. Release both keys, and then type the letter which you want to carry the diacritical, and the letter should appear.
Diacritical Name | Appearance | Key Command |
Acute | á, é, í | Option + e, then the letter you wish to accent. |
Grave | è, à, ù | Option + `, then the letter you wish to accent. |
Tilde | ñ Ñ | Option + n, then the letter you wish to accent. |
Circumflex | ê Ê | Option + i, then the letter. |
Umlaut | ä Ä ö Ö ü Ü | Option + u, then the letter. |
Cedilla | ç Ç | Option + c or C |
Reverse Question Mark | ¿ | Option + ? |
Esszet | ß | Option + s |
Reverse Exclamation Mark | ¡ | Option + 1 |
Pound | £ | Option + 3 |
Paragraph | § | Option + 6 |
Degree | º | Option + 0 |
Copyright | © | Option + g |
To find many other characters and symbols, choose Key Caps from the Apple menu (in OS 9) or Applications > Utilities (in OS X) for a diagram of your keyboard and selecting, for instance, Wingdings. You will see the characters or symbols as they would appear on your keyboard if you had switched to that font in your word processing program. Hit Caps Lock to see even more symbols. Highlight the characters that you want to use in the Key Caps window, copy them (Apple + c) and paste them into your document (Apple + v).
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Evolution of early Arabic calligraphy (9th – 11th century). The Basmala was taken as an example, from kuficQur’an manuscripts. (1) Early 9th century. script with no dots or diacritic marks [1]; (2) and (3)9th – 10th century under Abbasid dynasty, the Abu al-Aswad's system establish red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel. Later, a second black dots system was used to differentiate between letters like 'fāʼ' and 'qāf' [2][3]; (4) 11th century, In Al Farāhídi's system (system we know today) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels [4].
A diacritic[1] (for example, an acute accent) is a mark put above, below, through or on a letter. The word comes from the Greek word διακριτικός (transl. diakritikós = 'distinguishing').Usually, it affects the way the word is said (pronounced). Most diacritics concern pronunciation because most alphabets do not describe the sounds of words exactly. Diacritics are rare in English, but common in many other languages.
- 1Examples
Examples[change | change source]
English[change | change source]
Diacritics are not used much in modern English. Two types of diacritics have become part of everyday English: the dot above the 'i' or 'j' and the apostrophe. But they are no longer commonly thought of as being diacritical. The apostrophe is used to show missing letters (elision, it's to replace it is) and show possession (as in Mike's car).
In most other cases, use of diacritics for native English words is considered old-fashioned (not used anymore). Diaereses (similar to umlauts) can be used on words where two vowels next to each other are pronounced separately (rather than together as a diphthong), like noöne, reëstablished, or coöperate. This method is still used sometimes, depending on the word.[2] Diacritics are sometimes used in loanwords (words of foreign origin), such as naïve, entrée, pâté, façade.[3]
French[change | change source]
Letter e: common are the acute accenté (rising voice, as in the French word née), grave accentè (lowering voice); élève has (from the left) acute, grave and silent e. The cedillaç denotes a soft c.
A different principle is illustrated by the circumflexî. This usually shows the loss of letter: e.g. maistre (Middle French) > maître (modern French). Thus its function is historical. Also, less often, the circumflex is used to distinguish between homophones. These are words spelt the same, but with different meanings. Example: sur = on, but sûr = safe. In those cases the pronunciation of the two words may be different.
Spanish[change | change source]
In Spanish the acute accent simply signals stress, e.g. educación. There the stress is on the last vowel, not on the second to last. Second to last vowel (syllable) is the usual position for stress in spoken Spanish. It is usually not signalled by an accent.
The tildeñ is pronounced like ny, and counts as a letter in their dictionaries, coming after n.
German[change | change source]
The umlautü in German is pronounced ue, and is less used in modern German. Historical name-spellings should always keep the umlaut if it was used for that name.
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish[change | change source]
The Scandinavian languages treat the characters with diacritics ä, ö and å as new and separate letters of the alphabet, and sort them after z. Usually ä is sorted as equal to æ (ash) and ö is sorted as equal to ø (o-slash). Also, aa, when used as an alternative spelling to å, is sorted as such. Other letters modified by diacritics are treated as variants of the underlying letter, with the exception that ü is frequently sorted as y.
Non-Roman scripts[change | change source]
Gen. 1:9 And God said, 'Let the waters be collected'.
Letters in black, niqqud in red, cantillation in blue
Letters in black, niqqud in red, cantillation in blue
Scripts for semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew have a wide variety of diacritics. This is partly because the semitic languages were originally formed without separate letters for vowels, and partly because some of the languages (Arabic in particular) are spoken in a number of dialects.
The diacritics in Hebrew and Arabic are not always used, however.
References[change | change source]
- ↑/daɪəˈkrɪtɪk/
- ↑Thomas Burns McArthur and Roshan McArthur (2005). Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press. ISBN9780192806376.
- ↑Dr Lim Chin Lam (11 November 2011). 'How foreign is English?'. The Star. Retrieved 17 June 2012.
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