Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I don't think English has letters with multiple dots above them.


It does. The English I was taught in school, includes the diaeresis as part of the writing system. Words like coördinate, reëngage, Boötes, are spelled as I just spelled them.

I don't adhere to it. It is old-fashioned, even a bit archaic. But it is still the preferred spelling in some style guides, and it is still used in some publications.


It’s used to signal when you have a pair of the same letters but the second has a different pronunciation.

So “deer” has two e’s but no umlaut because they make the same sound but “coördinate” has the umlaut since the second o is a new sound.

I personally like them and wish they would come back if only as a small push back against the horrific ambiguity that is the English language


As far as I understand, it's actually used to indicate a hiatus instead of a diphtong. E.g. naïvety is meant to indicate that aï are part of different syllables and shouldn't be pronounced in the same syllable, just like the oö in coördinate.


> It’s used to signal when you have a pair of the same letters but the second has a different pronunciation.

That's a somewhat naïve take.


The catch is that the diaeresis in Türkiye does something completely different that the diaeresis you mentioned, so actually it would be less confusing if English didn't have it at all.

...then again, even some Germans are using the diaeresis for this purpose, such as this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Ho%C3%ABcker - and you can't blame him, because usually "oe" is a transliteration of "ö", and then his name would mean "hump" (as in camel's hump).


Where did you go to school, if you don't mind me asking? I didn't realize that was ever something that was taught -- I'm curious if it's a geographic thing?

The only place I've ever seen the diaeresis used like that is in the New Yorker.


Ontario, Canada, in the '90s. We weren't required to use it but I do recall a brief lesson on co-operate, cooperate, coöperate, etc. being valid variants.


How naïve.

But that's the only not-foreign not-name word from the list I've seen written with the ¨ in Britain. I have see Chloë and Zoë written with it too.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_spelle...


It does, but for a different reason, to mark when two vowels are pronounced separately. Like naïve. Not often used, but the New Yorker does.


never picked up an issue of the new yorker?


I've read them on the internet yes. Good point. Different usage of the dots though.


the "e" in "karaoke" also has a different usage in english. so what


naïve




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: