English terms with diacritical marks

Some English language words have letters with diacritical marks. Most of the words are loanwords from French, with others coming from Spanish, German, or other languages. Some are however originally English, or at least their diacritics are. Proper nouns are not generally counted, except when used as an eponym.

Reasons for not dropping diacritics

If foreign words are used only by a small group of people, their foreign spelling and even pronunciation are often preserved for a long time due to various reasons. Membership in the group may require a considerable amount of education, and this may have brought with it an understanding and appreciation of foreign languages and their spelling systems and pronunciation. In addition, all social groups have ways of showing who belongs to the group and who doesn't, and it may be necessary to use or at least be aware of a diacritical spelling of a term to be considered a "real" professional. On the other hand, due to a general trend towards openness, transparency, and popularisation in most academic disciplines and a lack of foreign language skills in most non-academic professions in English-speaking countries, there is a definite conscious trend and effort to get rid of diacritics in cases where their use is not necessary for reasons of comprehension and/or pronunciation. This same rationale can be seen in more general spelling changes, for example the Hawaiian word ʻukulele is often spelled phonetically as ukelele in British English, due to ignorance of the word's origin and meaning.

Current state

Most originally non-English words have become “naturalized” into the English language; a similar process occurs in all other languages. This process is carried out mostly unconsciously by all normal users. Since modern dictionaries are mostly descriptive and no longer prescribe outdated forms, they increasingly drop the accents and other diacritics (for example "à propos", which lost both the accent and space to become apropos). Many, if not most, of the words listed below with accents and other diacritics are actually in the process of losing their accents but can be found in print in both their accented and unaccented versions. Other words are still most often found with their accents, often to help indicate pronunciation (e.g. frappé, naïve, soufflé), or to help distinguish them from an unaccented English word (e.g. exposé, résumé, rosé). Sometimes diacritics are even added to imported words that originally didn't have any, often to distinguish them from common English words or to assist in proper pronunciation; maté from Spanish mate and animé are examples of these. In some cases, the only correct English spelling (as given by the OED and other dictionaries) requires the diacritic (e.g., soupçon, façade).

Regional differences

The trend to drop diacritics is much stronger in U.S. English than in British English. The current state changes from one edition to the next of all dictionaries . Generally speaking, if one wants to make a “good impression” (show that one is "educated"), it is better to use the diacritical form unless one is an expert in the field and knows whether it is already considered acceptable to drop the diacritic. On the other hand, one can decide to purposely make a self-assured and "modern" impression by trusting to one’s feel for the language and using spellings without diacritics (perhaps in connection with something blatant like a so-called split infinitive to show that the diacritic was left out on purpose).

Other issues

Technical terms or those associated with specific fields (especially cooking or musical terms) are less likely to lose their accents (such as the French soupçon, façade and entrée). Some Spanish words with the letter “ñ” have been naturalised by replacing the “ñ” with “ny” (e.g. cañón is now usually canyon, piñón is now usually pinyon). Certain words like piñata, jalapeño and quinceañera are usually kept intact. In many instances the 'ñ' is replaced with the English letter n.

In German words, the letters with umlauts “ä, ö, ü” may be written “ae, oe, ue”. This could be seen in many newspapers during World War II, which instead of writing Führer, wrote Fuehrer. However, umlauts are usually now left out, with no "e" following the previous letter. This perhaps could be because of a lack in German language knowledge.

Occasionally, hypercorrection can occur with borrowed words, with diacritics added where there should be none, in the erroneous belief that this is the correct form. An example is the addition of an accent to the “e” in latte, to become latté or even lattè. In Italian, where an accent (almost always a grave accent) is used to indicate stress on the final syllable, latte is stressed on the first syllable, so has no accent. However, confusion with French café or Italian caffè leads to the unnecessary accent being added. These cases when the diacritic is not borrowed from any foreign language but purely of English origin, include the “oö” in the now somewhat rare variant spellings of words such as “coöperation” (compare the original French coopération). A famous of example of this diaeresis, is the MIT Harvard book coöp/coop.

See also

• Diacritics
• Loan words
• English language: Written accents

Lists

• List of English words with diacritics
• Lists of English words of international origin
• List of English words of French origin
• French phrases used by English speakers
• List of German expressions in English
• List of English words of Spanish origin
• Wiktionary:Transwiki:List of Spanish expressions in common English