Lionel Elie Mamane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > E.g. hair would be pronounced approx. like english "hair", but ha�r > (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 "co�perate", and indicates that the vowel is pronounced separately. Another example is "re�nter". 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 "co�perate". Other examples: da�s, na�ve. The accent grave is used to indicate that a vowel usually elided should be pronounced. For example, "talked" has one syllable, but "talk�d" 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 "r�le". 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 "r�le" by some older authors only because that is a recent loan word from French, where it is only correctly spelled <r�le>. 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 "Hall�" 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
