Diaeresis (known as tréma in French) and umlaut both employ the same character. But there is a difference of use between diaeresis and umlaut. Letters with umlaut stand for completely different sounds than their non-accented counterparts. For example in Swedish Oo represents /u/ while Öö represents /ø/. Diaeresis on the other hand does not change the sound value of a letter, but instead marks that a vowel is not part of a diphthong or digraph. Both are also known under the general name trema.
The diaeresis and umlaut characters have different origins. Diaeresis was borrowed from the Greek alphabet,[1] while umlaut began as a small e placed on top of Aa, Oo or Uu. This e then later evolved into the same shape as diaeresis.[2]
Characters with Diaeresis/Umlaut
¨ |
◌̈ |
Ä |
ä |
Ǟ |
ǟ |
Ë |
ë |
Ḧ |
ḧ |
Ï |
ï |
Ḯ
|
U+00A8 |
U+0308 |
U+00C4 |
U+00E4 |
U+01DE |
U+01DF |
U+00CB |
U+00EB |
U+1E26 |
U+1E27 |
U+00CF |
U+00EF |
U+1E2E
|
Diaeresis |
Combining Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter A With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter A With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter A With Diaeresis And Macron |
Latin Small Letter A With Diaeresis And Macron |
Latin Capital Letter E With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter E With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter H With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter H With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter I With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter I With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter I With Diaeresis And Acute
|
ḯ |
Ö |
ö |
Ȫ |
ȫ |
Ṏ |
ṏ |
ẗ |
Ü |
ü |
Ǖ |
ǖ |
Ǘ
|
U+1E2F |
U+00D6 |
U+00F6 |
U+022A |
U+022B |
U+1E4E |
U+1E4F |
U+1E97 |
U+00DC |
U+00FC |
U+01D5 |
U+01D6 |
U+01D7
|
Latin Small Letter I With Diaeresis And Acute |
Latin Capital Letter O With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter O With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter O With Diaeresis And Macron |
Latin Small Letter O With Diaeresis And Macron |
Latin Capital Letter O With Tilde And Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter O With Tilde And Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter T With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Macron |
Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Macron |
Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Acute
|
ǘ |
Ǚ |
ǚ |
Ǜ |
ǜ |
Ṻ |
ṻ |
Ẅ |
ẅ |
Ẍ |
ẍ |
Ÿ |
ÿ
|
U+01D8 |
U+01D9 |
U+01DA |
U+01DB |
U+01DC |
U+1E7A |
U+1E7B |
U+1E84 |
U+1E85 |
U+1E8C |
U+1E8D |
U+0178 |
U+00FF
|
Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Acute |
Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Caron |
Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Caron |
Latin Capital Letter U With Diaeresis And Grave |
Latin Small Letter U With Diaeresis And Grave |
Latin Capital Letter U With Macron And Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter U With Macron And Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter W With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter W With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter X With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter X With Diaeresis |
Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis |
Latin Small Letter Y With Diaeresis
|
Uses of Diaeresis or Umlaut
Usage
|
Language
|
Letters
|
Notes
|
Central vowel
|
Albanian (Manastir (current) alphabet)
|
Ëë /ə/
|
|
Kazakh (2019 and 2021 alphabets, as well as Kazinform's romanization)
|
Üü /ʉ/
|
Unaccented Uu stands for /ʊ/ in the 2019 alphabet and Kazinform's romanization, and for /ʊw/ and /w/ in the 2021 alphabet.[3]
|
Moro
|
Ëë /ˈəː/
|
This letter represents a "long or stressed ‘ə’",[4] but the phonemicity of it is contested.[5] The orthography for Moro did not have capital letters originally.[4]
|
Change of place of articulation
|
Malagasy
|
N̈n̈ /ŋ/
|
This letter is used in some dialects. It may optionally be replaced by Ññ or Ng ng.[6] Note that N̈n̈ is not a precomposed letter.
|
Diphthong
|
Adyghe (BGN/PCGN 2012 romanization)
|
Ëë /jo/
|
Ëë only appears in Russian loan words, as transliteration of Cyrillic Ёё.[7]
|
Kazakh (Kazinform's romanization)
|
Ïï /əj/
|
This romanizations also used Iı for /ə/ and İi for /ɪ/.[3]
|
Disambiguation of homographs
|
Tahitian
|
Ïï /iː/
|
This letter is only used in the reflexive pronoun ïa to distinguish from some other word, pronounced the same. The letter is barely used nowadays however.[8]
|
Front version of back vowel (Ää is included here, even though its unaccented version is not a back vowel in all of these languages)
|
Estonian
|
Ää /æ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
|
|
Finnish
|
Ää /æ/, Öö /ø/
|
Usage borrowed from Swedish.
|
German
|
Ää /ɛ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
|
The umlaut evolved from the letter e in the digraphs ae, oe and ue.
|
Hungarian
|
Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
|
|
Icelandic
|
Öö /œ/
|
|
Kazakh (2019 and 2021 alphabets, as well as Kazinform's romanization)
|
Ää /æ/, Öö /œ/
|
Unaccented Aa and Oo stand for /ɑ/ and /o/ respectively.[3]
|
Livonian
|
Ää /æ/, Ǟǟ /æː/
|
|
Mandarin (Pinyin romanization)
|
Üü /y/, Ǖǖ /y˥/, Ǘǘ /y˧˥/, Ǚǚ /y˨˩˦/, Ǜǜ /˥˩/
|
Üü without tone markings may stand for the so called neutral tone,[9] or it is simply due to no tone marks being used in the given text.[10] Note that these tone values are based on the Beijing dialect.[11]
|
Slovak
|
Ää /æ~ɛ/
|
[æ] is dialectal pronunciation, with most speakers merging it with the phoneme /ɛ/ or /a/.[12]
|
Swedish
|
Ää /ɛ/, Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
|
The umlaut evolved from the letter e in the digraphs ae[13] and oe.[14] Üü is not really a part of the Swedish alphabet, but is regularly used in some loanwords and surnames.
|
Turkish
|
Öö /œ/, Üü /y/
|
Oo and Uu stand for /o/ and /u/, respectively.
|
Hiatus
|
Catalan
|
Ïï /i/, Üü /u/
|
Diaeresis on an Ii or Uu following another vowel marks that the two vowels are in different syllables. Without diaeresis, the Ii or Uu would stand for a semivowel.[15]
|
French
|
Ëë, Ïï, Üü, Ÿÿ
|
|
Welsh
|
Ëë /ɛ, eː/, Ïï /ɪ, iː, ij/, Üü /ɨ̞, ɨː, ɪ, iː/, Ẅẅ /ʊ, uː/, Ÿÿ /ɨ̞, ɨː, ɪ, iː, ə, əː/
|
The diaeresis is used for marking that a vowel is not part of a diphthong. The diaeresis is sometimes omitted in casual speech. Ïï stands for /ij/ when it is followed by another vowel.[16] Regarding Üü and Ÿÿ: The realizations /ɨ̞, ɨː, ə/ are used in northern dialects and /ɪ, iː, ə, əː/ in southern dialects.
|
Non-silent vowel
|
Catalan
|
Üü /w/
|
Diaeresis on an Uu that is between Gg or Qq and a front vowel marks that this letter stands for /w/. Otherwise it would be a part of the digraph Gu gu /g/ or Qu qu /k/ that is used before front vowels.[15]
|
Spanish
|
Üü [w]
|
Diaeresis is used on a Uu between Gg and a front vowel, to show that the Uu is not a silent letter as would otherwise be the case.[17]
|
Raised vowel
|
Hungarian
|
Ëë /e/
|
Unaccented Ee stands for /ɛ/. Ëë is not really a part of the Hungarian alphabet however; it is used when writing down spoken or sung language in a dialect that has this phoneme.
|
Short vowel
|
Adyghe (BGN/PCGN 2012 romanization)
|
Ää /a/
|
Unaccented Aa represents /aː/.[7]
|
Other
|
Arabic (ISO 233 romanization)
|
T̈ẗ /a(t)/
|
This letter is used for transcribing the Arabic letter ة which is used for a suffix which may or may not include a /t/, depending on context.[18] Note that there is no precomposed form of capital T̈.
|
Uses of Diaeresis or Umlaut
Usage
|
Language
|
Creator
|
Letters
|
Notes
|
Digraph disambiguation
|
Lhueslue (external romanization)
|
Qwynegold
|
Ëë /e/
|
The diaeresis is used when /e/ follows another vowel, and signals that these two vowel letters do not form a digraph. These two vowels are pronounced as a diphthong.[20]
|
Front version of back vowel
|
Qwynegold (Qwadralónia dialect)
|
Qwynegold
|
Ää /æ, ɛ/, Ä́ä́ /æˑ, ɛˑ/, Ā̈ā̈ /æː, ɛː/, Öö /ø, œ/, Ö́ö́ /øˑ, œˑ/, Ō̈ō̈ /øː, œː/
|
Ä́ä́, Ā̈ā̈, Ö́ö́, Ō̈ō̈ have no precomposed forms.
|
Songulda (external romanization)
|
Qwynegold
|
Öö /ø/, Üü /y/
|
Unaccented Oo, Uu stand for /o, u/.[21]
|
Stress
|
Seebee (external romanization)
|
Qwynegold
|
ȷ̈ /ˈj/
|
Normally a dot is placed below the first letter of a stressed syllable, but in the case of lower case j, umlaut is used instead because there is not space for a dot neither below or above the letter otherwise. Note that ȷ̈ is not a precomposed letter, but a combination of dotless ȷ and combining diaeresis.
|