diakríttal

Diakrit (diacritical mark) is a glyph added to a letter or character to indicate a difference in pronunciation, stress, or tone. Diacritics are common in many alphabets, including Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek. They can also be used to distinguish between homographs or to indicate the origin of a word.

One of the most common types of diacritics is the accent mark, such as the acute (á), grave (à), and circumflex (â). These marks are often used in Romance languages like French, Spanish, and Portuguese to indicate stress or vowel quality. For example, in Spanish, the accent mark differentiates between words like "si" (if) and "sí" (yes).

Other diacritics include the umlaut or diaeresis (ä, ö, ü), which can indicate a change in vowel sound as seen in German, or that a vowel should be pronounced separately from the preceding vowel, as in the English word "naïve". The tilde (ñ) is used in Spanish and Portuguese to indicate a palatal nasal sound. The cedilla (ç) in French and Portuguese signifies a soft "c" sound before "a", "o", or "u".

Diacritics are not limited to European languages. In Vietnamese, a complex system of tone marks is used, which are also considered diacritics, to distinguish between words that are otherwise spelled the same. In many transliteration systems, diacritics are used to represent sounds not found in the target alphabet. The proper use of diacritics is essential for accurate pronunciation and understanding of many languages.