Those bastards have finally gone and done it. news.clickhole.com/going-rogue-th…
"Anyöne whö cömes för us över the döts is göing tö end up lööking like a pretty huge dumbass."
I'm glad that they clarified that the dots are not actually umlauts, but the correct plural form is "diaereses": one diaeresis, two diaereses.
Cf. one axis, two axes, one ellipsis, two ellipses, one parenthesis, two parentheses.
That's right, folks: The singular of "parentheses" is not, as so many people say, "parenthese."
If you're still confused about the difference between an umlaut and a diaeresis, though, here it is: a diaeresis is two dots placed above a vowel to show that it's pronounced separately from an adjacent vowel.
In French, for example, "ai" usually sounds like /ɛ/ (the vowel in "bet"). So in the word "naïve," the diaeresis shows that the "a" and "i" are pronounced separately, as a sequence of /a/ and /i/.
The New Yorker uses diaereses over repeated vowels (as in "coöperate") to show that they're not single long vowels (that is, that it's not "COOP-erate").
It's a weird style choice, because I've never seen any evidence that English speakers struggle with these vowel combos.
It's a weird style choice, because I've never seen any evidence that English speakers struggle with these vowel combos.
An umlaut, on the other hand, is two dots that show that a vowel is pronounced further forward in the mouth than it would be otherwise.
For example, the vowels /o/ and /u/ are pronounced in the back of the mouth. But sometimes an adjacent front vowel like /i/ or /e/ will pull that back vowel forward.
The result is a vowel that's pronounced in the front of the mouth like /i/ or /e/ but still has lip rounding like the original /u/ or /o/.
You see this in a lot of German plural forms or words with certain suffixes that trigger umlaut, as in the singular "Mann" and plural "Männer." In the latter, the /a/ has been pulled forward (and raised a little) to /ɛ/.
(Though I guess that I should add that /a/ doesn't have lip rounding, so neither does the umlauted "ä." An umlauted vowel only has lip rounding if the unumlauted form does.)
"Umlaut" can also refer to the phonological process of fronting a back or central vowel because of a nearby front vowel. English doesn't use the umlaut character, but it does have words whose pronunciations come from umlauts, as in "man"/men," "goose"/"geese," and "mouse"/"mice."
And, because @jessesheidlower requested it: The diaeresis and umlaut characters are homoglyphic. That means they look the same, even though they're not the same character. They have very different historical origins.
@jessesheidlower The diaeresis goes back to Ancient Greek, where it was used much as it is today (it was also used to mark word divisions before people started using spaces for that). From there it was borrowed into Latin and then into many other European languages.
@jessesheidlower The umlaut character, on the other hand, goes back to the Middle High German practice of writing an "e" after a vowel to show that it was umlauted. Then they started writing the "e" above the vowel instead.
@jessesheidlower And in the handwriting of the time, a lowercase "e" actually looked a lot like a lowercase "n." (Don't ask me why.) This superscript lowercase "e" which looked like an "n" eventually turned into two little vertical lines and then simply two dots.
@jessesheidlower For example, here's how the word "schön" evolved from "schoen": 
@jessesheidlower You still see some variation between umlauted vowels and vowels followed by "e," especially if someone's typing on a keyboard that doesn't support umlauts. You also still see the "e" retained in some names like Goethe.
@jessesheidlower So to sum up:
Diaereses: Used to separate vowels or to make your writing look like New Yorker style.
Umlauts: Used mostly in Germanic languages to show that a vowel has been fronted or to make your band name look more mëtäl.
Diaereses: Used to separate vowels or to make your writing look like New Yorker style.
Umlauts: Used mostly in Germanic languages to show that a vowel has been fronted or to make your band name look more mëtäl.
@jessesheidlower Oh, and etymologies, for anyone interested:
Diaeresis: noun of action from the Ancient Greek diairein 'to divide, separate', from dia- 'apart' + hairein 'take'
Umlaut: from the German um 'about' + laut 'sound', meaning 'change of sound'
Diaeresis: noun of action from the Ancient Greek diairein 'to divide, separate', from dia- 'apart' + hairein 'take'
Umlaut: from the German um 'about' + laut 'sound', meaning 'change of sound'
@jessesheidlower PS: I find it really annoying that umlaut doesn't have its own Wikipedia article; it's just a section within the article on the diaeresis. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis…
@jessesheidlower As far as I can tell, almost everyone. I have literally almost never heard "parenthesis" said out loud. In my experience, it's almost ALWAYS "parenthese" (pronounced like "parentheses" but without the final "s").
