I have seen the word “naive” in print many times using a character that looks like an “i” with two dots instead of one.
What is this character called? Why do people feel they have to print “naive” this way in English - why not just use the regular “i” character? Are there any other English words that use this character?
It’s called a dieresis (with the accent of the second syllable) and is used to indicate separate syllable pronunciation within the word. In other words, don’t say NAVE, say nigh-EVE. You used to see it on coöperate and Noël, for a couple of examples. I think it’s a good thing to see it phased out.
It’s called a diaeresis (or dieresis in American usage). It shows that the two vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as a diphtong, i.e. “nigh-eve”, rather than “nave” or “nive”.
It is also present in words such as Noël (No-ell, rather than Nohl), and Citroën (which in the proper French pronunciation is roughly Sit-roh-awhn … “Sitron” in French sounds like the word for “lemon”!).
In older texts you may see “co-operate” spelt as “coöperate”, for the same reason.
Websters:
Main Entry: di·aer·e·sis
Pronunciation: dI-'er-&-s&s, British also -'ir-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural di·aer·e·ses /-"sEz/
Etymology: Late Latin diaeresis, from Greek diairesis, literally, division, from diairein to divide, from dia- + hairein to take
Date: circa 1611
1 : a mark ¨ placed over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable
>> (with the accent of the second syllable)
Die-EH-re-sis
It is also used in French, Spanish and other languages.
Darn, beaten to the punch - and, weirdly enough, with the same examples!
By the way, MonkeyMensch, why do you think it’s a good thing that diaereses have become an endangered species? Personally, I love little typographical oddities like this. Give me a good old encyclopædia listing places like Haïti and Zaïre, and the legendary phœnix any day. 
Well, I love that sort of thing too, r_k. I’m a logophile with a penchant for minutiae from way back.
Over the years, though, I’ve realized that ridding ourselves of some of the artifacts of the written word from years past might be a good thing. At the very least you take away opportunities for folks to mis-use those features and in doing so piss off the folks who know how to use them correctly.
The New Yorker still uses diaerises (e.g., “coöperate”).
So is dieresis just English for umlaut? Or is an umlaut something else?
Reading the umlaut link, ‘umlaut’ is when you modify the pronunciation of a vowel, and ‘diaeresis’ is when you pronounce consecutive vowels independently. But ‘umlaut’ is also used to refer to the pair of dots on top of a vowel.
r_k
Give me a good old encyclopædia listing … and the legendary phœnix
Ah, count me in: I’m afraid they’re going the way of archæology and palæontology.
So, is anybody lonely for “hôtel” to return to English, in that case?
So what’s “æ” called then?
G’dau
‘æ’ could be either the letter ash or a ligature of the letters a and e. If you see it in Old English it is probably ash, if you see it in Latin probably the ligature.
Regards,
Agback
In ‘intellecutal circles’ (read pretentious) ‘naif’ is quite often used.
And in case you want to know all the “codes” for making those special symbols, this webpage has all of them:
      **http://www.1728.com/altchar.htm
**
Not really. It’s to indicate the pronunciation sit-roh-enn instead of a nasalation, sit-roh-eng, in the last syllable.
Am I the only one who has a terribly difficult time emphasizing the second syllable of dieresis and not the third?
Qazzz, I’m totally the same way. What’s up with that?
Nope.
“di-er-EE-sis” sounds a hell of a lot more natural to me than “di-ER-ee-sis”.