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In linguistics, a 'diaeresis', also spelled 'dieresis' (from Greek διαίρεσις, ''diairein'', to divide; see also American and British spelling differences) is the division of two adjacent vowels as two syllables rather than as a diphthong. An example is "coöperate". The opposite phenomenon is known as 'synaeresis'.

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Orthography

See also

Orthography

In orthography, the term "diaeresis" is sometimes used as a shortening of "diaeresis mark", which designates a diacritic similar to the umlaut sign ( ¨ ) that was originally placed over vowels to indicate that they had undergone a phonological diaeresis, but has since been repurposed for a variety of different functions, in various languages. See Diaeresis (diacritic).
Phonological diaeresis is sometimes indicated with other diacritics, such as the acute accent in Spanish and Portuguese. For example, the Portuguese words ''saia'' "skirt" and ''saía'' "I used to leave" (Brazilian pronunciation) differ in that the sequence forms a diphthong in the former (synaeresis), but is a hiatus in the latter (diaeresis).

See also

★ Hiatus (linguistics)

★ Pausa

★ Synaeresis

★ Syllable

★ Diphthong