Diacritic

A diacritic /daɪ.əˈkrɪtɪk/ – also diacritical mark, diacritical point, or diacritical sign – is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός (diakritikós, "distinguishing"), which is composed of the ancient Greek διά (diá, through) and κρίνω (krínein or kríno, to separate). Diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute ( ´ ) and grave ( ` ), are often called accents. Diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.

The main use of diacritical marks in the Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. Examples from English are the diaereses in naïve and Noël, which show that the vowel with the diaeresis mark is pronounced separately from the preceding vowel; the acute and grave accents, which can indicate that a final vowel is to be pronounced, as in saké and poetic breathèd; and the cedilla under the "c" in the borrowed French word façade, which shows it is pronounced /s/ rather than /k/. In other Latin alphabets, they may distinguish between homonyms, such as the French là ("there") versus la ("the") that are both pronounced /la/. In Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question.

Diacritics (journal)

diacritics is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1971 at Cornell University and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Articles serve to review recent literature in the field of literary criticism, and have covered topics in gender studies, political theory, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and other areas. The editor-in-chief is Laurent Dubreuil (Cornell University).

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Greek diacritics

Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The complex polytonic orthography notates Ancient Greek phonology. The simple monotonic orthography, introduced in 1982, corresponds to Modern Greek phonology, and requires only two diacritics.

Polytonic orthography (from πολύς "much, many" and τόνος "accent") is the standard system for Ancient Greek and Medieval Greek. The acute accent ( ´ ), the grave accent ( ` ), and the circumflex (  ̑ ) indicate different kinds of pitch accent. The rough breathing ( ῾ ) indicates the presence of the /h/ sound before a letter, while the smooth breathing ( ᾿) indicates the absence of /h/.

Since in Modern Greek the pitch accent was replaced by a dynamic accent, and the /h/ was lost, most polytonic diacritics have no phonetic significance, and merely reveal the underlying Ancient Greek etymology.

Monotonic orthography (from μόνος "single" and τόνος "accent") is the standard system for Modern Greek. It retains two diacritics: a single accent or tonos ( ΄ ), which indicates stress and the diaeresis ( ¨ ), which usually indicates a hiatus but occasionally indicates a diphthong: compare modern Greek παϊδάκια (/pajˈðaca/, "lamb chops"), with a diphthong, and παιδάκια (/peˈðaca/, "little children") with a simple vowel. A tonos and a diaeresis can be combined on a single vowel to indicate a stressed vowel after a hiatus, as in the verb ταΐζω (/taˈizo/, "to feed").