Definition:
In phonetics, a symbol added to a letter that alters its sense, function, or pronunciation. Adjective: diacritical.
Diacritics in English include the following:
- Acute accent: used with certain French loanwords (for example, café, cliché) to indicate that the final e is pronounced
- Apostrophe: used to indicate possession (children's) and the omission of a letter (don't)
- Diaeresis or Umlaut: used with certain names (Chloë, Brontë) and words (coöperate, naïve) as a guide to pronunciation
- Grave accent: occasionally used in poetry to indicate that a normally silent vowel should be pronounced (learnèd)
- Macron: dictionary notation (for example, pādā for payday) to signify "long" vowel sounds
See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "distinguishing"Examples and Observations:
- "Technically, there are only three accent marks: the acute accent, the grave accent, and the circumflex. Apart from the breve and the macron, which are termed pronunciation marks, the other marks added to certain letters are true diacritics. For most purposes, all are generically referred to as either accent marks or diacritics. . . .
"For foreign words that have become common in English, no common rules can be given for when to retain an accent, or diacritic, and when to drop it. The language is in flux. It is becoming more common, for example, to see the acute accent and diacritics being dropped from the words cliché, café, and naïve--thus, cliche, cafe, and naive. . . . In many cases, the accent should be retained to avoid misreading: for instance résumé (or resumé) instead of resume; pâté instead of pate.
"Accents and diacritics should be retained in foreign place names (such as São Paulo, Göttingen, and Córdoba) and personal names (such as Salvador Dalí, Molière, and Karel Čapek)."
(Shelley Townsend-Hudson, The Christian Writer's Manual of Style. Zondervan, 2004)
Pronunciation: di-eh-KRI-tik
Also Known As: diacritical mark
