Ë

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Ë, ë (e-umlaut or diaeresis) is a letter in the Albanian and Kashubian languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Abruzzese dialect, and Luxembourgish language as a variant of letter "e". The letter also appears in Turoyo and Taiwanese Hokkien when written in Latin script.

Contents

[edit] Usage in various languages

[edit] Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, the trema (Afrikaans: deelteken) is mostly used to indicate that the vowel should not be diphthonged, for example "geër" (giver) is pronounced /xɪəɪr/, whilst "geer" (a wedge-shaped piece of fabric) is pronounced /xɪər/. There are some cases where the deelteken does nothing to the pronunciation, like in "reën" (rain), which is pronounced /rɪən/, but "reen" (no meaning) would be pronounced the same. The only reason for the deelteken in this case is for traditional reasons, because the archaic form of "reën" is "regen" and the deelteken just indicates that the g was removed. * Some older people do pronounce "reën" in two syllables /rɪəɪn/.

The deelteken does exactly what it says (Afrikaans: Deel=Separate). It separates syllables, as it indicates the start of a new one. An example of this is the word "voël" (English: Bird). It gets pronounced in two syllables. Without it the word becomes "voel" (English: Feel), pronounced in one syllable.

[edit] Albanian

Ë is the 8th letter of the Albanian alphabet and represents /ə/. It is the most commonly used letter of the language comprising 10 percent of all writings.

[edit] French and Dutch

Ë appears in words like French 'Noël' and Dutch 'koloniën'. This so-called trema is used to indicate that the vowel should not be diphthonged. For example, "Noël" is pronounced /noɛl/, whilst "Noel" would be pronounced /nœl/. Likewise, "koloniën" is pronounced /koloniən/, whilst "kolonien" would be pronounced /kolonin/.

[edit] Kashubian

Ë is the 9th letter of the Kashubian alphabet and represents /ə/.

[edit] Luxembourgish

In Luxembourgish, <ë> is used for stressed schwa /ə/ like in the word <ëmmer> (always). It is also used to indicate a morphological plural ending after two <ee> such as in <Eeër> (eggs) or <leeën> (lay).

[edit] Mayan languages

In the modern orthography of Mayan languages, the letter ë represents /ə/, like in Albanian.

[edit] Turoyo

In Latin-script Turoyo (Syriac) the letter ë gives a schwa. In grammar, sometimes it is a replacement for the other, original vowels (a, o, e, i, u). Example words that have ë: knoţër (he is waiting), krëhţi (they are running), krëqdo (she is dancing), sxërla (she has closed), gfolëḥ (he will work), madënḥo (east), mën (what), ašër (believe).

[edit] Character mappings

Charset Unicode ISO 8859-1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16
Majuscule Ë U+00CB CB
Minuscule ë U+00EB EB

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

The Basic modern Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Letter E with diacritics
Letters using umlaut or diaeresis sign

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646
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