#diacritical marks

[cryoverkiltmilk]

As the season of flourishing anuses arrives once again, please, remember your diacritical marks.

[esc-confessions]

[messofthejess]

How important are diacritics to your first language?

If you drop a diacritic, people will still understand your writing.

Dropping a diacritic means accidentally saying something insulting.

My first language doesn't use diacritics.

I just like clicking on a button/show me results.

Voting ended onOct 17, 2024

The more I learn about other languages (and learn other languages themselves), the more I realize how bizarre it is that English doesn't use diacritics outside of some borrowed words. We're supposed to intuit how everything is pronounced without little marks on and around the letters to help us? Weird.

I specified "first language" because I know many of you blog in English but have a different first language.

[dinaive]

دِ نَ

اِ ذْ مِ رْ

[quicksilvertongue]

when you put the wrong diacritical mark above a letter. Call that a grave mistake

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Will California finally allow accents and original spellings on birth certificates?

If a proposed bill passes, it wouldn't just affect the state’s large Latino population but others with non-English names, such as Vietnamese, French and Arab American Californians.

Edwin Flores at NBC News: 

María Brenes' first name has an accent on the letter “í” — but you wouldn't know that by looking at the Los Angeles resident's government documents.

Since 1986, when Californians voted to make English the state's official language, state residents like Brenes who have accent marks or tildes in their names have been barred from including them in birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and other forms of government documents.

Brenes hopes proposed legislation — CA Assembly Bill 77 — changes that.

The bill would allow for the use of diacritical marks — like accents — and the Spanish-language letter "ñ" on government-issued documents. Residents would be able to request new ones with the desired changes for a fee.

“I think it’s an incredible opportunity for California to acknowledge the cultural language diversity of the state,” said Brenes, 46, an executive director at InnerCity Struggle, a neighborhood nonprofit in East Los Angeles. “Maria has an accent on the ‘í,’ and I’ve had to compromise where it’s accepted and where I can insert it.”

The potential change would affect not only the state’s large Latino population of more than 15 million but others with non-English names, such as Californians of Vietnamese, French or Arab heritage.

Brenes also wants the bill to pass for her son Emiliano, 12, and daughter Alegría, 10. Her daughter's name, which means happiness in Spanish, has an accent; so does the children's last name, Sánchez-Brenes.

If the legislation passes, Brenes would pay to change her children's names to reflect their accents, so they grow up embracing their Mexican heritage.

“We have been too often conditioned to assimilate and to integrate, but at the cost of losing essential parts of who we are and what we represent,” said Brenes, who grew up being scolded by educators for speaking Spanish in school during the 1980s and '90s.

'A move against Spanish, Latinos'

In 1986, California voters passed Prop 63, which established English as the official language in the state. That same year, the use of diacritical marks was stopped at the county level because of the state government's interpretation of the law.

But the law was clearly selective — the state allowed hyphens for names such as Smith-Jones and apostrophes in names like "O'Hare," but accents used in names in other languages such as Spanish were “unacceptable entries.”

"That is an important contrast, because if lawmakers didn't like the way some languages or some ethnicities didn't conform to their version of English, then that should have been applied equally," said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o and Central American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We can very easily infer that this was a move against Spanish [and] Latinos — and that other marks were allowed to stay in if they were from European ancestry."

President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, known as IRCA, which set off a conservative reaction in California and other states after an estimated 3 million undocumented immigrants were allowed to adjust their status.

[...]

Ignoring the state's Spanish-language, Mexican history

According to David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine and a professor of medicine, the issue of language in the state predates Prop 63.

In fact, California's original Constitution of 1849 included Spanish and diacritical marks because there were Spanish-speaking delegates of Spanish and Mexican heritage. California was part of Spain and later Mexico before it became a U.S. state.

"I've often said that [1849] was the last time that Latinos were relatively proportionally represented, up until recently," Bautista said. "The Constitution created a bilingual situation in which literally it says that 'all laws decrees regulations, that from their nature require publication shall be published in English and Spanish.' Minutes were kept in Spanish as well as English of the California constitutional convention."

The state, cities and counties had to do everything bilingually until 1889, when the California Constitution was rewritten to exclude Chinese immigrants, which removed bilingual provisions in the process, Bautista said.

Could diacritic marks be permitted on your birth certificates in California? That's if AB77 gets passed and signed into law.

Such laws are needed because linguistic accuracy and cultural competence dictate that accent marks should be in an official document.

[hakehayashi]

Japanese Diacritical Marks

In Japanese, diacritical marks like the dakuten and handakuten are considered markers that indicate if a sound is vocalised or plosive, respectively.

Daku-ten 濁点・だくてん 『○ ﾟ』は→ぱ、ひ→ぴ、ふ→ぷ、へ→ぺ、ほ→ぽ 　　　　ha→pa, hi→pi, fu→pu, he→pe, ho→po Handaku-ten 半濁点・はんだくてん 『○ ﾞ』 　　　　は→ば、ひ→び、ふ→ぶ、へ→べ、ほ→ぼ 　　　　ha→ba, hi→bi, fu→bu, he→bo, ho→bo 　　　　か→が、き→ぎ、く→ぐ、け→げ、こ→ご 　　　　ka→ga, ki→gi, ku→gu, ke→ge, ko→go 　　　　た→だ、ち→ぢ、つ→づ、て→で、と→ど

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[eastcountytoday]

Assembly Health Committee Approves Medina Bill to Allow Diacritical Marks on Vital Records

Assembly Health Committee Approves Medina Bill to Allow Diacritical Marks on Vital Records

SACRAMENTO  –  On Tuesday, the Assembly Health Committee passed Assembly Bill 82 by Assemblymember Jose Medina with bipartisan support.  AB 82 would allow a person’s name to be accurately recorded on their vital records. “A name is closely tied to a person’s identity, history, and heritage,” said Assemblymember Medina. “It should be accurately represented on important documents, and parents…

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