# Why no diacriticals in English? **URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696 **Category:** Factual Questions **Created:** [January 13, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696 "2019-01-13T18:56:00Z") **Posts on this page:** 20 **Page:** 2
### Author: ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/21 "2019-01-14T21:17:12Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Whether diacriticked letters are considered distinct letters or not is usually reflected in the collating sequence (i.e. alphabetization) for that language. > > For example, in French, diacriticked letters are alphabetized with the non-diacriticked letters of the same shape. So they’re just considered variants of those letters. OTOH, Scandinavian languages each have three diacriticked vowels, but they’re put at the end of the alphabet after Z, so are considered distinct letters. The fact that English usually drops the diacritics and then treats Å and Ä the same as A (moving names from the end of the alphabet to the beginning) disturbs some Scandinavians. Well, what kind of complicates things is that some languages also treat digraphs as “single” letters in their alphabet. For example, in Hungarian you have “cs,” “ly,” “ny,” “sz,” “ty,” and “zs” treated separately. So, for alphabetizing, “csont” (“bone”) would come after “cukor” (“sugor”). (And it can get confusing when it falls on a word boundary, like egészség is egész+ség and not egés+zség.) But, hold on a second, some of the diacritic vowels are treated the same for alphabetical purposes, but others are not. For example, O and Ó only differ in length (the second is held longer than the first). They are treated as the same letter alphabetically. But O and Ö are two different letters, with Ö coming immediately after O alphabetically. Same with U/Ú vs Ü/Ű. ---
### Author: ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/22 "2019-01-14T21:27:27Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Well, what kind of complicates things is that some languages also treat digraphs as “single” letters in their alphabet. For example, in Hungarian you have “cs,” “ly,” “ny,” “sz,” “ty,” and “zs” treated separately. So, for alphabetizing, “csont” (“bone”) would come after “cukor” (“sugor”). (And it can get confusing when it falls on a word boundary, like egészség is egész+ség and not egés+zség.) > > But, hold on a second, some of the diacritic vowels are treated the same for alphabetical purposes, but others are not. For example, O and Ó only differ in length (the second is held longer than the first). They are treated as the same letter alphabetically. But O and Ö are two different letters, with Ö coming immediately after O alphabetically. Same with U/Ú vs Ü/Ű. Don’t forget that Å = AA, Ä = AE, Ñ = NN, etc. These collation rules are all pretty arbitrary anyway; the original Latin alphabet only had 21 letters, and one could hypothetically ask why does English alphabetize U, V, and W as separate letters (or I/J, C/G), why Z comes at the end, and so on. ---
### Author: ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/23 "2019-01-14T21:50:28Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You are correct in noting that diacritics were added in other languages to help make pronunciation easier. That would only apply to someone who doesn’t speak the language. People who speak a language already know how to pronounce it–it by definition. Yes, it might help a native speaker who is learning to read as he or she decodes (i.e., to comprehends) words he or she knows how to pronounce, but doesn’t recognize in print. > [@EdelweissPirate](#): > > Without a diaeresis, the pronunciation of _cooperation_ is utterly irregular: English phonics dictates that _oo_ is pronounced _ooh_. Again, we should keep in mind that changing the way we write words doesn’t change how we speak. No word is pronounced in an “irregular” manner, as pronunciation is natural. It’s the spelling that is “irregular.” What you’re saying would only apply if people learned how to speak through reading, which is clearly not the case. That vast majority of words (or roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc.) are learned naturally before people learn to read. Yes, a small percentage of entirely unfamiliar words are encountered through text first, and in those situations, the spelling guides in pronunciation–should someone need to speak the word–but those tend to be words that people don’t speak as frequently anyway. ---
### Author: ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/24 "2019-01-14T22:30:49Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Don’t forget that Å = AA, Ä = AE, Ñ = NN, etc. These collation rules are all pretty arbitrary anyway; the original Latin alphabet only had 21 letters, and one could hypothetically ask why does English alphabetize U, V, and W as separate letters (or I/J, C/G), why Z comes at the end, and so on. I’m pretty sure the ancient Romans themselves had fully separated C and G by the classical period, no? And wasn’t it they who put Z at the end? ---
### Author: ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/25 "2019-01-14T23:05:55Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Caxton doesn’t seem to have seen the need for them: [https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/william-caxton-and-canterbury-tales](https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/william-caxton-and-canterbury-tales) > > Of course, it’s okay to use them on imports like café. \ Caxton was using an imported Dutch/German typeset, so it lacked some things English and Latin writing sometimes used before, such as the thorn (Þ,þ), eth (Ð,ð), and ash (Æ,æ). The last one is the only one that sometimes pops up modernly, except when thorn is shown as simply a ‘y’ (‘Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe’ should start ‘Þe Olde…’). In other words, we lost some letters from the English alphabet because printers couldn’t be arsed. ---
### Author: ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/26 "2019-01-14T23:18:20Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I’m pretty sure the ancient Romans themselves had fully separated C and G by the classical period, no? And wasn’t it they who put Z at the end? Yes, the 21-letter Latin alphabet I mentioned (ABCDEFZHIKLMNOPQRSTVX) was adapted from earlier Etruscan versions of the alphabet. G replaced Z (which did not occur in Latin at the time) in the 3rd century (so C and G were subsequently distinct letters), and then Y and Z (= zeta) were put at the end in the 1st century, which brings us to the classical Latin alphabet ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ ---
### Author: ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/27 "2019-01-14T23:20:32Z")
Fact is the 26-letter Latin alphabet is just plain inadequate for almost all European languages, especially when it comes to vowels. My own dialect has at least this many vowel— - - heat, peat, beet [ɪ] - hit, pit, kit, bit [eɪ] - hate, pate, Kate [ɛ] - pet, bet [æ] - hat, pat, bat, cat [a] - father [ɑ] or [ɒ] - hot, pot, bother, cot, bot [ɔ] - caught, bought [ʌ] - cut, putt [oʊ] - coat, both, boat [ʊ] - put, book - poot, boon, hoot [aɪ] - height, kite, bite [aʊ] - pout, bout That’s way more than A E I O U and sometimes Y. ---
### Author: ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/28 "2019-01-14T23:26:09Z")
> [@Saltire](#): > > \ Caxton was using an imported Dutch/German typeset, so it lacked some things English and Latin writing sometimes used before, such as the thorn (Þ,þ), eth (Ð,ð), and ash (Æ,æ) English, sure, and maybe Norse, but not Latin; see the above post. Classical Latin has 23 letters; I was going to say no diacritics, but I found [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/I_littera_in_manuscripto.jpg) image of classical handwriting which has what look like a few accents sprinkled in there ---
### Author: ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire) #### Post date: [January 14, 2019, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/29 "2019-01-14T23:47:15Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > English, sure, and maybe Norse, but not Latin; see the above post. Classical Latin has 23 letters; I was going to say no diacritics, but I found [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/I_littera_in_manuscripto.jpg) image of classical handwriting which has what look like a few accents sprinkled in there Not Classical, certainly. And I’m pretty sure thorn and eth are English/Norse/Danish or something like that. But I do think ash may have been used in Latin writing in England during the few centuries before Caxton set up his shop on Fleet Street. I could be wrong, of course. I’m not really expert in this. ---
### Author: ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/30 "2019-01-15T00:04:40Z")
Eth is from Latin (the capital is Ð, not to be confused with the Đ in some alphabets like Croatian or Vietnamese). Thorn and wynn (Ƿ ƿ) for W were from Germanic runes. There was also Insular G (ᵹ ᵹ) but that’s mostly an Ireland thing. After the Norman conquest it mutated into yogh (Ȝ ȝ) which later came to use the same symbol as Z, but it was a J/G sound. ---
### Author: ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/31 "2019-01-15T10:46:04Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > It’s interesting how Spanish splits the difference. Ñ is considered a separate letter in most dictionaries (but then again, often so are CH and LL), while the “accent” (á, é, í, ó, ú) is not. The former change the sounds of letters, while the latter just change the stress (or, sometimes, don’t change anything – just help you distinguish between homonyms). In fact, one of the most recent changes to DRAE+ is that CH, LL and RR used to be considered different letters officially, and now they’re not. RR has never gotten its own chapter and seats\* because no words begin by the spelling RR, but in theory it formerly could be alphabetized between RZ and SA rather than between RQ and RS. - The Official dictionary of the Spanish Language. - Academies of the Spanish Language get two seats per letter, that is, two people (one for uppercase and one for lowercase). ---
### Author: ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/32 "2019-01-15T15:54:44Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > The basic reason is that English has too many vowels (22-24, I read somewhere, depending on dialect) and too many dialects. In particular, London had a plethora of dialects that made any consistent spelling impossible. For example, each of the variants of -ough come from one or another dialect. In my Philadelphia dialect, the modal “can” and the noun “can” have different vowels. Fun anecdote- I had the privilege of a conversation once with a fellow who was in the Abraham Lincoln brigade. He mentioned once when new recruits from all over the world were signing up, and a fellow showed up with an unusual English name. they asked him to spell it and in his thick accent the fellow said the first letter something like “Oy”. The fellow signing people up said “is that ‘A’, or ‘E’, or ‘I’?” Depending on the type of British accent, any one was possible. * * * So now I’ve learned my one new thing for the day. Since I have never really met anyone named Zoe, I always thought Zoe was pronounced as it appears, and the pronunciation Zoey was the diminutive (like Mikey). ---
### Author: ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/33 "2019-01-15T15:57:55Z")
But it _is_ pronounced as it appears… it happens to appear in different ways to different speakers from different dialects. That the same word, any word, written the same way, is pronounced in different ways by different speakers who will tend to wonder about how anybody gets _that_ pronunciation from _this_ spelling, is one of the dominant features of English. ---
### Author: ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/34 "2019-01-15T16:09:29Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > But it _is_ pronounced as it appears… it happens to appear in different ways to different speakers from different dialects. That the same word, any word, written the same way, is pronounced in different ways by different speakers who will tend to wonder about how anybody gets _that_ pronunciation from _this_ spelling, is one of the dominant features of English. I think the problem is that English is an odd amalgam of languages. Isaac Asimov had an essay once discussing tht it was essentially a Germanic import language with a French overlay, thanks to the Anglo-Saxon occupation with the Norman nobility ovr top. So “cow” or “pig” that the peasant dealt with became “beef” or “pork” when it hit the table of the nobleman who could afford meat. Similarly, we have simple words for everyday use “sweat” and “breathe” and fancier latin-rooted/french words that say the same thing - “perspire”, 'respire". So perhaps with a smorgasbord of punctuation to choose from and too many variations, nothing stood out as the appropriate accentiffication. ---
### Author: ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/35 "2019-01-15T17:12:00Z")
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” -James Nicoll ---
### Author: ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/36 "2019-01-15T19:26:03Z")
The (semi-) interesting thing about “Zoë” is that, while the name is obviously… “borrowed” from Greek, the diaeresis mark was put in by the English themselves (the ones who did not simply write it as “Zoe”). As opposed to, e.g., “café”, which was already spelled that way. ---
### Author: ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/37 "2019-01-15T20:25:08Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” > -James Nicoll I’ve never really liked that quote. It makes it look like English is somehow unusual in its borrowing from other languages, when it really is not. All languages borrow words from others. There’s one language (Albanian?) that borrowed so many words from a neighboring language that linguists weren’t sure what family it was in. Now English has borrowed from more other languages than any other, but that’s a function of how widespread the language is, nothing else. ---
### Author: ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/38 "2019-01-15T20:30:26Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > I’ve never really liked that quote. It makes it look like English is somehow unusual in its borrowing from other languages, when it really is not. All languages borrow words from others. There’s one language (Albanian?) that borrowed so many words from a neighboring language that linguists weren’t sure what family it was in. Now English has borrowed from more other languages than any other, but that’s a function of how widespread the language is, nothing else. Well, I might argue that the Battle of Hastings and the introduction of Romantic vocabulary into the language made it a bit more of mutt language than others, especially as there are often Germanic-Romantic pairs of words meaning essentially the same thing. From the other languages I know, I don’t get the sense that it’s as widespread a phenomenon. ---
### Author: ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/39 "2019-01-15T20:37:22Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > especially as there are often Germanic-Romantic pairs of words meaning essentially the same thing Here’s another pithy quotation then: “There are no true synonyms in English.” ---
### Author: ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell) #### Post date: [January 15, 2019, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696/40 "2019-01-15T20:45:41Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Here’s another pithy quotation then: “There are no true synonyms in English.” I guess you can weasel with “true synonym,” but I would disagree, as I would with pretty much every other absolutist pithy quotation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-diacriticals-in-english/827696.md?page=3)