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From: bpc@netcom.com (Benjamin P. Carter)
Subject: Re: Diacritic symbol names
Message-ID: <bpcCxzz3x.HK2@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <384b9p$g1v@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 00:38:21 GMT
Lines: 21

hlu@wam.umd.edu (Hung Jung Lu) writes:

>Are there well-established names for diacritic symbols?
>(At least "tilde" seem to be widely used name for a 
>particular diacritic symbol ~ . Hat as in ^ is also a relatively
>common name. "Umlaut" is understood at least in English and German
>as the little two dots over u.)

The acute accent (') and grave accent (which slopes the other way)
are placed over letters, as is the circumflex accent or "hat" (^),
which someone else mentioned.  French also uses the cedilla under
the letter C to indicate an S sound rather than a K sound.  The
cedilla looks like a small number 5 without the horizontal line
at the top.  Different languages have different names for these
marks; I used English names above.  The French names are similar,
except that the acute accent is called "accent aigu" in French.

Also, German "umlaut" = French "tre'ma" = a pair of dots over a
letter.  
-- 
    Ben Carter                  internet address: bpc@netcom.com
