Dieresis

See also: Dieresis (homonymy)

The dieresis (¨) is a diacritic of the Latin alphabet inherited the Greek dieresis. It is made of two points juxtaposed which can place, in French, on the vowels E , I , U (and there in proper names) to indicate, normally, which the vowel which precedes must be separately marked and does not form part of a Digramme. For example, corn decides as my hoists and not like but . This dieresis also appears in common nouns of foreign origin but considered as introduced “French”: “Länder (plural of Land, German word)” or Angström.

The Tréma is sometimes the same graphic sign as the sign of German Umlaut , although its significance and its origin are different.

In French, there does not exist common noun containing ÿ . It appears on the other hand in several proper names:

communes: Aÿ, Faÿ-lès-Nemours, Freÿr, the Haÿ-the-Pinks and Moÿ-with-the Aisne;
street names: street and public garden of Cloÿs in the 18^e district of Paris;
family names:

Aÿ (II) is it twelfth Pharaon of XVIII^e dynasty (period of the New Empire);
Charles de Croÿ (1510-1612);
Guillaume de Croÿ (1458-1521);
Emmanuel de Croÿ (1717-1787);
Ghÿs, French version of a patronym of Flemish origin (Ghij);
Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925).

The use of the dieresis started, a very floating way and rather seldom, in the Western languages as from the 12th century in manuscripts in Anglo-Norman. It traces more like a Double acute accent (redoubling of a apex) that like our dieresis. The Imprimerie had to be awaited so that its use spread and started to be codified as from the 16th century.

Independent letters

In the Hungarian alphabets, Swedish and Finnish, ä and ö are independent letters. They are placed at the end of the alphabet, after Z and å, and have the same German origin as the ä and the ö, which are however not independent letters. See also å.

Other alphabets

Russian uses the dieresis on the letter е to note the accentuated sound. There will be thus все (all) and всё (all). The letter ё generally appears to replace a letter е or о under the accent, for example весёлый (merry) to put in glance with весело (merrily). It should however be noted that this distinction seldom appears out of the works intended for teaching: one will write thus indifferently все or всё, with load with the reader to make the distinction with the oral examination. The letter ё note also sometimes sounds and in the transcription of foreign words: гримёр ( make-up man , of French grimor ), серьёзный (serious).

The Ukrainian does not know the Russian ё , but uses the dieresis to distinguish ї from і .

Insertion on French a Windows keyboard

, then the vowel.

Insertion on a keyboard Apple QWERTY