diacriticele

Diacriticele are marks added to letters to modify their pronunciation, distinguish words, or indicate tone. They appear in many languages using the Latin alphabet and include accents, tildes, umlauts, cedillas, and related signs. In Romanian, the term diacriticele refers to five diacritic marks used on specific letters: ă (a with breve), â (a with circumflex), î (i with circumflex), ș (s with comma below), and ț (t with comma below). The Romanian letters Î/î and Â/â represent the same phoneme /ɨ/, but are used in different positions within a word: Î/î at the beginning and end, and Â/â in the middle. The letter ă denotes a distinct mid-central vowel, while ș and ț denote /ʃ/ and /t͡s/ respectively. Diacritics are essential for correct pronunciation and for distinguishing otherwise identical words.

Beyond Romanian, diacriticele help indicate vowel quality, stress, tone, length, or consonant changes in many languages. For example, acute and grave marks can alter meaning or syllable emphasis; cedillas, umlauts, and other signs modify sound or indicate loanwords. In computing and publishing, diacriticele must be encoded in Unicode to preserve spellings in names, literature, and scholarly texts; misrendering can obscure identity or alter meaning. Proper use of diacritics is a standard part of Romanian orthography and of many other languages that rely on diacritic marks to convey precise pronunciation and grammar.