Tähemärke

Tähemärke is the Estonian term for a diacritic mark attached to a letter to modify its pronunciation, stress, or meaning. Diacritic marks are used in many writing systems to distinguish sounds or words that would otherwise be indistinguishable. In Estonian, the standard alphabet includes four vowels with diacritics: ä, ö, ü, and õ. The first three are formed by adding a diaeresis/umlaut to a, o, and u; the letter õ is a distinct letter created with a special diacritic on o. These letters represent phonemes that are not identical to their base vowels and are crucial for correct pronunciation and meaning.

Diacritic marks occur in various positions—above, below, or through a letter—and different languages apply them in different ways. They may indicate vowel quality (as in ä, ö, ü), length or tone, stress, or consonant modification (as in č, š, ž). Some marks, like the acute or grave accents, indicate stress or pitch in languages such as Spanish or French; others, like the tilde or cedilla, alter the consonant sound.

In typography and computing, tähemärke are encoded as separate characters in Unicode, enabling consistent representation across fonts and systems. Estonian keyboards provide convenient access to ä, ö, ü, and õ, reflecting their status as standard letters rather than mere diacritics.

Overall, tähemärke describe both the diacritic marks themselves and the letters that incorporate them, and they play a central role in Estonian orthography as well as in many other languages.