dieresis

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In linguistics, diæresis, diaeresis, or dieresis, is the pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong, and it is also the name of the diacritic mark ( ¨ ) used to prompt the reader to pronounce adjacent vowels in this manner.

The word diæresis comes from the Greek noun διαίρεσις (diaíresis, meaning ‘division’ or, literally, ‘choice between’), which derives from the verb διαιρεῖν (diaireîn). The word was later simplified by dropping the grapheme æ and replacing it with the digraph ae in British English or with the letter e in North American English.

An example is the first two vowels in the word cooperate: it can be spelt co-operate or, using the diæresis, coöperate. The opposite phenomenon is known as synæresis.

Orthography

The diæresis is a diacritic mark ( ¨ ) used in English to indicate that two adjacent vowels are to be pronounced separately^[1] as in Boötes, Noël and naïve, the names Zoë and Chloë and words like reënter and coöperate. Despite its long history in English, the diæresis is decreasingly common in modern usage, though The New Yorker magazine^[2] is a prominent exception. Dutch uses the same mark in a similar way, (for example coëfficiënt), but as with English there is now a preference for hyphenation - so zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend[1].

The diæresis is still in common usage in French, from which the English examples Noël and naïve derive. It is usually written on the second of the two adjacent vowels – although since a spelling reform in 1990 it has been written on the u in -güe- and -güi-, as in Spanish. In Welsh, where the diæresis appears, it is usually on the stressed vowel, and this is most often on the first of the two adjacent vowels; a typical example is copïo [kɔ.'pi.ɔ] (to copy), cf. mopio ['mɔ.pjɔ] (to mop).

In some French words, the diæresis indicates that an otherwise unpronounced syllable is pronounced: aigüe or aiguë; cigüe or ciguë.

Other languages indicate phonological diæresis with different diacritics, such as the acute accent in Spanish and Portuguese. For example, the Portuguese words saia [ˈsai̯ɐ] "skirt" and saía [saˈiɐ] "I used to leave" (Brazilian pronunciation) differ in that the sequence /ai/ forms a diphthong in the former (synæresis), but is a hiatus in the latter (diæresis).

The diæresis diacritic mark is unrelated to the often identical-looking umlaut in German, and the decorative "heavy metal umlaut" of bands such as Blue Öyster Cult, Green Jellÿ and Motörhead.

Prosody

In prosody, diæresis means the division made in a line or a verse when the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word.

See also

• Hiatus (linguistics)
• Pausa
• Synæresis
• Syllable
• Diphthong

References

Bibliography

• Bringhurst, Robert (1992 [2004]). The elements of typographic style, version 3.0. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.