It
takes only a few steps to learn a new language if you get a good hold
on its alphabet. But learning alphabet of any language is not as
simple as learning the 26 letters of English. The advanced Latin
script as used in Languages like French, Spanish, English, etc.
comprises of 26 letters but the number varies in many other
languages. What leads to differ these numbers is the use of
‘Diacritics’. Diacritics indicates some sort of modification in
the base letter to aid its pronunciation. Such modifications are
required if the language uses such sounds that were not there in the
Latin one. Thus, varies the number of letters.
For
those who are not aware as to what this diacritics is? It is simply a
mark or sign that is placed through a letter that guides its
pronunciation in a particular manner. It seems as if English is the
only language which makes use of a "Neat" Latin alphabet,
i.e. there is no use of special letters of any kind. The 26 letters
a,
b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x,
y, z
are
considered the standard European alphabets. But their pronunciation
changes from place to place and to mark those changes, we have
diacritical marks with us. One can see the most prominent use of
diacritics in languages like Spanish, French, Czech, Romanian,
Danish, Polish, Hungarian, etc.
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| Learning Diacritics! |
For
example, see the alphabets of Czech a,
b, c, č, d, e, f, g, h, ch, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, ř, s, š, t,
u, v, w, x, y, z, ž.
The alphabet has got 30 letters. After this elaborate introduction of the
diacritics, let us see how these marks or signs look like and how
these are utilized by different languages. There are some marks that
are prominently used in the languages other than English, some of
them are:
- à, this mark here is called grave that indicates a low tone. E.g. ‘scold’
- á, this mark here is known as acute and it indicates the high tone. E.g. ‘what’
- â, circumflex, a mark that signifies a falling tone. E.g. ‘escape’
- ā, Known as macron the sign indicates an extra long stress. E.g. ‘day’
- ă, Known as breve it denotes the short stress that is given to a word. E.g. ‘cat’
- ǎ, háček, indicates a rising tone. E.g. ‘really’
- ą, also known as nasal hook, ogonek. E.g. ‘dome’
- a̓, known as glottal, the letters with the shown sign are vocalized with the glottis. E.g. ‘harm’
Thus,
we get to know that diacritics basically decides the intonation of a
letter, it also indicates as to which part of the mouth is stressed
more while articulating those letters. For instance, the articulation
of the letter ‘p’
is
bilabial since it needs coming together of both upper and lower lips.
Whereas, when you utter a letter like ‘g’
and
‘h’
you
feel a kind of vibration in your throat because these letters are
glottal since they are produced through glottis.
If planning to learn a language, you must keep in mind the various uses of these signs and marks within that language since these signs are the ones that form an accent. And you don’t get through acquiring a language completely unless you get the right accent.
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