diacritice

Diacritice, or diacritical marks, are symbols added to letters to modify their pronunciation, distinguish between otherwise identical words, or indicate prosodic features such as tone or stress. They are used across many languages that employ the Latin alphabet, as well as in other writing systems.

Common diacritics include the acute accent (é, á) and grave accent (è, à) to indicate vowel quality or stress; the circumflex (â, ê, î) often reflecting historical sounds; the tilde (ã, ñ, õ) for nasalization; the diaeresis or umlaut (ä, ö, ü) to mark a separate vowel sound; the cedilla (ç) to soften c; the caron or hacek (č, š, ž) for palatal modification; and the ring (å) in Scandinavian languages. Diacritics also include the macron (ā) and breve (ă) for vowel length.

In Romanian, diacritice refer to five letters that distinguish phonemes: ă, â, î, ș, ț, with uppercase variants Ă, Â, Î, Ş, Ţ. They are essential for correct pronunciation and meaning, affecting both verb forms and nouns. Other languages have their own sets, and in each case diacritics function as distinct orthographic elements that influence spelling and sorting.

Digitally, diacritics are encoded as combining or precomposed characters in Unicode; in plain ASCII, they may be omitted or replaced by transliteration, which can affect readability and searchability. Input methods, fonts, and normalization rules influence display and collation. The use and treatment of diacritics thus intersect linguistics, typography, and information technology.