Diaeresis
How Diaeresis works
The diaeresis (¨) - two dots above a vowel - has two distinct functions depending on the language. In German, it marks an umlaut: "a" (with diaeresis) is a different vowel from "a", changing pronunciation and meaning ("schon" means "already" but "schon" means "beautiful"). In French, it signals that two adjacent vowels are pronounced separately: "naive" is three syllables, not two.
Though visually identical, the German umlaut and the French diaeresis are considered different uses in Unicode, though they share the same combining character (U+0308). ISO-8859-1 includes pre-composed diaeresis vowels at codes 196, 203, 207, 214, 220 (uppercase) and 228, 235, 239, 246, 252 (lowercase). Browse them in our diaeresis character group.
Though visually identical, the German umlaut and the French diaeresis are considered different uses in Unicode, though they share the same combining character (U+0308). ISO-8859-1 includes pre-composed diaeresis vowels at codes 196, 203, 207, 214, 220 (uppercase) and 228, 235, 239, 246, 252 (lowercase). Browse them in our diaeresis character group.