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UMLAUT - a diacritic mark applied to vowels, which consists of two dots above the letter (as in coöperate) usually to indicate "diaeresis", or two separate vowel sounds.

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UMLAUT - a diacritic mark applied to vowels, which consists of two dots above the letter (as in coöperate) usually to indicate "diaeresis", or two separate vowel sounds.

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You are probably looking at the letter O in German, and sometimes the diacritic mark called the 'umlaut' is placed above the letter, like this: ö. The umlaut can be placed on any vowel, and affects the pronunciation of the vowel. The umlaut is very important in the German language, but this is not the only use of this mark. It is used in other languages, and there may be systems of phonetic pronunciation that use the umlaut to distinguish among various possible sounds that a vowel can represent.

In English, this diacritic is sometimes used to indicate something called diaeresis, meaning a pause or hiatus in the pronunciation of a word. In the word zoölogy, for example, you might initially be tempted to see the word as a simple 3-syllable word, ZOO-lo-gy. But it is not. The 'umlaut', or 'diaeresis' above the second letter o indicates that it is separated from the first letter o, so the word is pronounced more like zo-O-lo-gy. Zo rhymes roughly with toe, a -O- rhymes roughly with the o in olive.

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A dot above a letter is known as a 'diacritic dot'. The common name for the diacritic dot above an i or a j is a 'tittle'.

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'Diacritical marks' or diacritics, are glyphs placed above or below letters to indicate a special pronunciation of that letter, or that a final vowel is to be pronounced, or in some languages to distinguish between two distinct words that are spelled and pronounced in the same way.

In the word façade the diacritic (cedilla) attached to the bottom of the letter c indicates that it is pronounced as an s and not a k.

In the words Noël and Naïve the diacritic (diaeresis) indicates that its letter is pronounced separately from the other vowel and not as you might pronounce a diphthong. In these words the stress is also on the vowels with diacritics.

In German words the double dot above a vowel is called an umlaut, and it changes the sound of the vowel.

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For a lowercase 'a' with an umlaut, hold down the alt key and press 0282

For an uppercase 'a' with an umlaut, hold down the alt key and press 0196

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