Advanced Vocabulary - Written Symbols on Letters of Alphabets

Written Symbols on Letters of Alphabets

accent noun

a mark above a letter that shows how you pronounce it.

acute adjective

an acute accent is the mark ´ above a letter in some languages that shows it is pronounced in a particular way.

cedilla noun

a mark under the letter ‘c’ in some languages, such as French and Portuguese, that shows that ‘c’ has the sound of the letter ‘s’, not ‘k’. It is written as ‘ç’. 

circumflex noun

linguistics the symbol ^ written above a vowel in some languages such as French. A circumflex often makes the sound of a vowel longer.

diacritic noun

linguistics a mark written above or below a word that shows how you should pronounce that word.

diaeresis noun

linguistics the symbol ¨ put above a vowel to show that it is pronounced separately from another vowel, for example in the word ‘naïve’.

grave noun

linguistics the mark ` above a letter in French and some other languages to show how that letter is pronounced.

tilde noun

the symbol ~ that is written over the letter ‘n’ in Spanish, and ‘a’ and ‘o’ in Portuguese to change the way that they are pronounced.

umlaut noun

the mark ¨, written above a vowel in some languages, such as German, that shows it is pronounced in a particular way.

total words = 9