Ë

(e-umlaut or diaeresis) is a letter of Albanian and Kashubian language. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, Dutch, French and Luxembourgish language as a variant of letter “e”. The letter also appears in Turoyo when written in Latin script.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, the trema (Afrikaans: "deelteken") is mostly used to indicate that the vowel should not be diphthonged, for example "geër" (giver) is pronounced /xɪəɪr/, whilst "geer" (a wedge-shaped piece of fabric) is pronounced /xɪər/. There are some cases where the deelteken does nothing to the pronunciation, like in "reën" (rain), which is pronounced /rɪən/, but "reen" (no meaning) would be pronounced the same. The only reason for the deelteken in this case is for traditional reasons, because the archaic form of "reën" is "regen" and the deelteken just indicates that the g was removed.

Albanian

Ë is the 8th letter of the Albanian alphabet and represents IPA|/ə/. It is the most commonly used letter of the language comprising 10 percent of all writings.

French and Dutch

Ë appears in words like French 'Noël' and Dutch 'koloniën'. This so-called trema is used to indicate that the vowel should not be diphthonged. For example, "Noël" is pronounced IPA|/noɛl/, whilst "Noel" would be pronounced IPA|/nœl/. Likewise, "koloniën" is pronounced IPA|/koloniən/, whilst "kolonien" would be pronounced IPA|/kolonin/.

Kashubian

Ë is the 9th letter of the Kashubian alphabet and represents IPA|/ə/.

Luxembourgish

In Luxembourgish, <ë> is used for stressed schwa /ə/ like in the word <ëmmer> (always). It is also used to indicate a morphological plural ending after two such as in (eggs) or (lay).

Mayan languages

In the modern orthography of Mayan languages, the letter "ë" represents IPA|/ə/, like in Albanian.

Turoyo

In Latin-script Turoyo (Syriac) the letter "ë" gives a schwa. In grammar, sometimes it is a replacement for the other, original vowels (a, o, e, i, u). Example words that have "ë": "knoţër" (he is waiting), "krëhţi" (they are running), "krëqdo" (she is dancing), "sxërla" (she has closed), "gfolëḥ" (he will work), "madënḥo" (east), "mën" (what), "ašër" (believe).

Character mappings

ee also

*Umlaut (diacritic)
*Yo, a Cyrillic homoglyph

External links

* [http://www.omniglot.com/ Omniglot - writing systems & languages of the world]
** [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/albanian.htm Albanian language]
** [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/kashubian.htm Kashubian language]