DIACRITICAL MARKS. A mark used to indicate a special value for the letter to which it is attached. Such a mark may be a conven tionalised letter as the • in the Swedish A, originally an o, or the in the German a, 6, 4, originally an e. Similarly the cedilla (,) under a c in French and Portuguese was formerly a z, and the Greek iota subscript was written in the classical period on the line like any other iota. The or tilde over n in some Spanish words and English words derived from the Spanish was once nothing but another n. The accents and long and short signs explain themselves, and are nothing but arbitrary signs. In those Slavic languages which are written in Latin i characters, and in other languages of eastern Europe, diacritical marks are enormously multi plied. The Semitic alphabets represent the vowels and the modifications of the consonants by diacritical marks. English uses only the
hyphen (-), the cedilla 1.,), the tilde (--), the diaeresis (• •). The hyphen is not in the strict est sense a diacritical mark; it is used to separate the components of certain compound words. The diaeresis is placed over the second of two adjacent vowels which might be mis taken for a diphthong: thus cooperate. The tilde is only found in words from the Spanish, such as canon, and indicates that the n over which it stands is palatalised. The accents are used over a final e or ed to show it forms a syllable, as peakid, Bronte. A cedilla indicates that the c over it is pronounced like an s.
Diacritical marks are used according to sev eral distinct systems in the various styles of phonetic spelling for scientific purposes. See PHONETICS.