English Terms With Diacritical Marks - Words Imported From Other Languages

Words Imported From Other Languages

Non-English loanwords enter the English language by a process of "naturalization", or specifically Anglicization, which is carried out mostly unconsciously (a similar process occurs in all other languages). During this process there is a tendency for accents and other diacritics that were present in the donor language to be dropped (for example French hôtel and French rôle becoming "hotel" and "role" respectively in English, or French à propos, which lost both the accent and space to become English "wikt:apropos".

In many cases, imported words can be found in print in both their accented and unaccented versions. Since modern dictionaries are mostly descriptive and no longer prescribe outdated forms, they increasingly list unaccented forms, though in some cases the only correct English spelling (as given by the OED and other dictionaries) requires the diacritic (e.g., soupçon, façade).

Words that retain their accents often do so to help indicate pronunciation (e.g. frappé, naïve, soufflé), or to help distinguish them from an unaccented English word (e.g. exposé, résumé, rosé). 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 Spanish letter ñ have been naturalised by substituting English ny (e.g. Spanish cañón is now usually English canyon, Spanish piñón is now usually English pinyon pine). Certain words like piñata, jalapeño and quinceañera are usually kept intact. In many instances the ñ is replaced with the plain letter n. In words of German origin, 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 printed Fuehrer for Führer. However, today umlauts are usually now either left out instead, with no e following the previous letter or in sources with a higher Manual of Style (such as the New York Times, The Economist) included as German. Zurich is an exception since it is not a case of a "dropped umlaut", but is a genuine English exonym, used also in French (from Latin Turicum) written without the umlaut even alongside other German and Swiss names which retain the umlaut in English.