The Tittle: The Story of the Dot on the i
The dot above the lowercase "i" has a name—the tittle—and a history far bigger than its size. From medieval scribes battling illegible strokes to Turkey's dotted and dotless İ/ı distinction…
Tag: diacritics
The Hungarumlaut: Mastering the Double Acute Accent (ő, ű)
Hungarian is a typographic rarity, distinguishing itself as one of the only languages to utilize the "double acute" accent (ő, ű). This diacritic, jokingly dubbed the "Hungarumlaut", serves a vital…
Why Is Polish So Different From Other Slavic Languages?
Ever wondered why Polish sounds and looks so different from its Slavic cousins like Russian or Czech? From its unique nasal vowels—a precious relic of ancient Proto-Slavic—to a complex spelling…
Cyrillic vs Latin: The Great Slavic Alphabet Divide
Why do Polish and Russian look so different despite both being Slavic languages? The answer lies not just in linguistics, but in a fascinating 9th-century story of two saints, competing…
How Vietnam Got Its Latin Script
The Vietnamese alphabet, Quốc Ngữ, presents a fascinating paradox with its Latin letters used for a tonal, Austroasiatic language. Originally created by 17th-century Catholic missionaries to spread their faith, the…
The Alphabet of a Revolution: How N’Ko Is Uniting West Africa’s Languages
While many alphabets are ancient, the N'Ko script was born in 1949 from one man's defiant response to colonial prejudice. Created by Solomana Kante, this ingenious alphabet is perfectly tailored…
The Alphabet That Isn’t: Unpacking the Logic of Abugidas and Abjads
Most of us learn the ABCs and assume all writing works this way, but that's just one piece of the linguistic puzzle. From Arabic's consonant-only script to Hindi's consonant-vowel units,…
The History of the French Circumflex
The French language, renowned for its fluidity and musicality, is adorned with a variety of diacritical marks that contribute to its phonetic, etymological, and aesthetic...