Lionel Elie Mamane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > E.g. hair would be pronounced approx. like english "hair", but haïr > (ha\"ir) is "ha-yir".
Ah, that's roughly the same meaning that a diaeresis has in English.
Many English speakers have failed to note that English actually has diacritical marks. The diaeresis is used in words like "coöperate", and indicates that the vowel is pronounced separately. Another example is "reënter". This one is optional; the diaeresis is an aid to pronounciation, but there is only one pronounciation of "cooperate", whether you spell it "cooperate" or "coöperate". Other examples: daïs, naïve. The accent grave is used to indicate that a vowel usually elided should be pronounced. For example, "talked" has one syllable, but "talkèd" has two. This comes up in poetry, of course. It's basically only used for the -ed suffix. The circumflex is also used in words like "rôle". It indicates a longer vowel (as in French it indicates a syncopation from a longer Latin form). However, this is always optional and idiosyncratic to particular words. For example, it is used in English "rôle" by some older authors only because that is a recent loan word from French, where it is only correctly spelled <rôle>. This one is always optional in English. Even more rarely, the acute accent is used by some to indicate a pronounced final E that would normally be silent in English orthography. For example, the German "Halle" might well be rendered "Hallé" in English text, to indicate that the last vowel should be pronounced. The dot on lower-case I (and J) was originally a diacritical mark, and the apostrophe also has diacritical functions. Thomas
