“Talking Leaves”–The Cherokee Alphabet

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The story behind the Cherokee alphabet is one of the most amazing to be found in the history of the written word, one that underscores the importance of writing and the preservation of language in protecting minority cultures.

Let’s begin with a single fact: the Cherokee alphabet is the only instance of an illiterate people creating its own writing system without help or encouragement from an outside culture. The creator of this alphabet (actually, a syllabary) for the Cherokees was himself a Cherokee acting on his own initiative. His name was Sequoyah, and at the time he began his great work, he was illiterate. Wow!!

And before moving on, let’s note another fact: Cherokee is the only Southern Iroquoian language that is still spoken.

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Sequoyah

Here is Sequoyah’s story, which is mostly the story of how he created his syllabary. Born around 1770 near present-day Knoxville, Tennessee, Sequoyah was the son of a Cherokee mother, Wut-teh, and a white father, Nathaniel Gist, who was a commissioned officer in the Continental Army. He had an English name, George Gist, and was a silversmith by trade, which he practiced in Willstown, Alabama. He fought at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend as part of the Cherokee Regiment.

As was common among the Cherokee, Sequoyah had multiple wives.

Up to his middle years, Sequoyah seems to have lived a typical life for a Cherokee of his time and place; in 1809, partly out of frustration that he could not write or read letters, partly out of admiration for the English alphabet (which the Cherokees called “talking leaves”), Sequoyah began the mammoth work of creating a writing system for the Cherokee language.

At first, he tried to create a set of ideograms to represent the language; but after a year, he realized that this was not practicable. He next turned to the creation of a syllabary, and by around 1820 had completed his writing system, which contained 86 characters. During this time, as is not uncommon with the obsessed inventor, he neglected his duties, leaving his fields unplanted, and endured the destruction of his early work by one of his wives.

Initial efforts at persuading the Cherokees to adopt his system were met with suspicion and accusations of sorcery, but Sequoyah persevered (the first person to learn the new writing system was his daughter), and by 1825, the Cherokee Nation had officially adopted the syllabary. The results were impressive: a Cherokee, Atsee, translated the Gospel of John into Cherokee; a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, adopted the script in 1828; and before long, the literacy rate among the Cherokee exceeded that of the surrounding white population. In 1828, Sequoyah himself received a silver medal from the Cherokee Nation in honor of his work.

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Though the the syllabary has clearly been critical to the survival of the Cherokee language through the many adversities that the Cherokees have endured since its invention (most notably, the Trail of Tears), what may be most remarkable about the Cherokee writing system is the detailed information we have about its creator. The talents behind the Native American craft tradition, to my eye, are evident in the beauty of the Cherokee characters; if I had to pick a favorite, it would be the sign for “wo,” an elegant and compact letterform. We should also not overlook the contribution of the English and Greek letters that Sequoyah adopted for his script. Their angular, geometric form creates an interesting tension when juxtaposed against the sinuous forms that Sequoyah seemed to prefer. Here we have something strange and unparalleled: an American alphabet, one that reflects our roots in both European and Native American history. We can only be thankful that Sequoyah’s syllabary is still in use today; we can only hope that his script’s survival portends new fusions and creations as our culture continues to evolve.

RT

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Bottom Image: Author, Kaldari; All images: WikiCommons, Public Domain.

29 Faces in May; A rare elf indeed

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Poetry is a form of magic, as is its close cousin, drawing. And what is magic, if not the gift outright? Here, by way of proof, is a portrait by someone whose work can take us someplace marvelous…  RT

ps. i wish there were an alphabet that had this quality of drawing the viewer in…

29 Faces in May; A rare elf indeed.

Hangul, Literacy, and Culture–What an Alphabet Can Do For You

King Sejong the Great

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I might be skipping ahead a bit folks, but I think it’s time to introduce you to what many people consider to be the world’s most effective alphabet: Hangul.

But before I launch into a description of this alphabet’s extraordinary history and many virtues, a word of warning is in order for English speakers. Hangul was designed for speakers of Korean, a tonal language situated pretty much at the opposite end of the language spectrum from English. What makes Hangul important for the English-speaking world is 1) the story of its creation; 2) its approach to representing the sounds of language; and 3) the hope that its logical design and gradual success might serve as a model in creating an alphabet that can be used to write the major world languages, in particular, English, Chinese, Spanish, French, and Russian.

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1) History. Let’s start with the story of Hangul’s creation. King Sejong (r. 1418-1450) faced a not-unfamiliar situation in East Asia: an extremely low literacy rate resulting from the use of the Hanja, the Chinese character set, which arrived with Buddhism in Korea in the 7th century A.D. Sejong decided to create an alphabet for writing Korean that anyone could learn, with the goals of making literacy universal and strengthening Korea’s cultural identity. Overcoming opposition from court officials who did not want to lose the power their literacy gave them, the king summoned his Hall of Worthies–the eminent scholars of his time–and together the king and Hall devised the twenty-eight letters of the new alphabet, publishing the definitive text on Hangul in 1446.

The alphabet was an immediate success, allowing the poorly educated and women to read and write for the first time. But, needless to say, this social revolution prompted a backlash after Sejong’s death in 1450. Confucian scholars fought fiercely to retain the privileges their monopoly on writing had given them, and in 1504, the use of Hangul was forbidden by royal decree. The Hanja were reinstated as the sole legitimate writing system.

But at this point something remarkable happened: in defiance of the official ban, the use of Hangul among the educated class flourished. Starting in the late 1500′s, two entirely new genres of poetry, gasa and sijo, developed, and the novel written in Hangul became a major literary form. Although the use of Hangul among ordinary people disappeared, the literacy rate may nonetheless have increased, since Hangul is extremely easy to learn.

Finally, in the late 19th century, Hangul was reinstated for official use, and during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), the use of Hangul was encouraged as a means of separating Korea from Chinese influence. Although Japanese became the official language, a mixed Hangul-Hanja script was taught in the colonial school system; education, moreover, was mandatory, and for the first time the use of Hangul letters became universal in Korea.

Soon after independence in 1945, an official Hangul orthography was adopted, and today in both Koreas Hangul has replaced the Hanja as the common writing system.

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2) The Hangul Alphabet. Hold onto your hats, folks: the alphabet that King Sejong and his Hall of Worthies created is remarkable by any standard. In its current form, Hangul has 24 letters, of which 14 are consonants and 10 vowels.

a) Hangul is a partially featural alphabet; that is, the shapes of its letters (or letterforms) reflect the sounds they represent. It is the only featural script in widespread use.

b) Consonants are classified by the vocal organ that produces them: molar (velar), tongue (coronal), lip (bilabial), incisor (sibilant), throat (guttural), and light lip (labiodental). The letterform of each of these classes is based on a shape that is meant to resemble the vocal organ involved, with additional strokes being added to indicate the particular letter’s modification(s) from the model/basic shape.

Other consonant’ featural characteristics include a vertical top stroke over a letter to indicate a plain stop; the nonstops lack the stroke.

c) Sejong and his scholars designed the letterforms of Hangul vowels themselves; they are based on just three symbols: a dot (representing the sun), a horizontal stroke (representing the earth), and a vertical stroke (representing man). Vowel harmony was an important consideration in the design of the vowels, though VH is not as important in spoken Korean as it was during Sejong’s period.

d) Letters in Hangul that are pronounced as a syllable are not written consecutively, but are rather grouped together in blocks. The syllable blocks have three advantages: the letters within them are arranged in the block in an order reflecting the sequence of sounds in the syllable;  the blocks save space in writing and printing; and the blocks are beautiful.

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Of course, there’s more to the alphabet than the brief description above covers; to get an better idea of the script, study this chart of jamo, or Hangul letters:

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3) Modeling a Future Universal Alphabet on Hangul. A writing reform based on the development of Hangul would go far towards  increasing literacy and bringing cultures across the globe closer together. Here are some of the Hangul principles that one might use to create this alphabet:

a) A strict adherence to phonetic letters;

b) A letterform design that reflects that vocal organs used in producing the sound;

c) A uniform method of marking the same kind of modification to a class’s basic letterform;

d) A logical arrangement of the letters by class; and

e) The continued use of current alphabets until their use become burdensome.

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Photos: Top: Public Statue of King Sejong in Seoul, Korea. Author: David Hepworth. WikiCmns. CC 2.0 Generic. Bottom: Papers printed with Hangul letters. Author: jared. WikiCmns. CC 2.0 Generic.

Suprasegmentals

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The days (and leaves) are falling fast in (mostly sunny) Martinsburg, and RT has been busy arranging further linguistic and grammatical explorations for friends and followers… in particular, set aside a day on your calendar for Tea-Time with the Dragons of Grammar, which promises to be a most illuminating (and mischievous) event…but for those who can’t wait for the latest hit from the Dragons, here is something feisty and fiery.

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In linguistics, a segment is any discrete unit that can be identified in the production or reception of human speech (for instance, a phone or phoneme). Suprasegmentals are phonemes that cannot be easily broken down into segments. For instance, the segments of sign language are visual–hands, face, eyes, and body gesture. Vowels and consonants are also segments, that is, discrete speech units.

On the other hand, some speech units do not exist independently from others; these are the suprasegmentals, and include such items as tone and secondary articulations (for instance, co-articulated consonants). Suprasegmentals are in essence additional and simultaneous speech information that augments or completes a speaker’s meaning or articulation.

Just imagine Mandarin Chinese without its tones; the language has been robbed of most of its articulation. That’s how important suprasegmentals are.

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As far as charting and scribing these erudite beasts, patience is in order. For English speakers, stress is a familiar concept (especially if you’re a poet) and helps structure the sound of our speech. On the other hand, no adult English speaker will be able to master the subtleties of the Chinese tones. The other marks fall somewhere in the middle in terms of familiarity…but more on that from RT in the next little while…

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Chart: WikiCmns; Authors: Grendelkhan, Nohat; Licence: CC 3.o Unported.

Pitman Shorthand

Here are the letterforms for the other best-known modern shorthand system, Pitman Shorthand. Basing his work on Samuel Taylor’s shorthand (the first to be used throughout the English-speaking world), Sir Issac Pitman, who published his invention in 1837, created a shorthand that uses related letterforms to represent related sounds (the first to do so). For instance, voiced sounds are represented by thick strokes; unvoiced sounds by lighter strokes. Similarly, consonants shaped at the same place of articulation are all pointed in the same direction. In short (pardon the pun), Pitman’s system is phonetic and featural.  

People writing shorthand can easily achieve speeds of 60-100 words per minute… a skill useful–even in today’s computerized world–for taking notes (or if you’re trying to finish the first draft of your novel )

RT

Logograms (Short Forms)

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Consonants

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Charts: WikiCmns; Author: Xanthoxyl; CC 3.0 Unported.

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Shorthand–Fluency and Legibility

Sample of Pitman Shorthand

Although shorthand can refer to any writing system intended to reduce the time and effort involved in writing, in modern times, the term has applied to two specific systems: Pitman Shorthand, introduced in 1837 by Sir Issac Pitman, and Gregg Shorthand, published in 1888 by John Robert Gregg. A more recent system, Teeline Shorthand, introduced in 1970, has become popular in the United Kingdom.

Readers should beware: shorthand has suffered from association with 20th-Century secretarial work. These aids to writing are neither simple nor easy to master. Some writing systems, such as the Chinese characters, practically cry out for an abbreviated and relatively straightforward version–and in fact such a shorthand has been used in China for centuries. In Europe, the first shorthand was created in the 16th Century, and both Sir Issac Newton and Samuel Pepys used shorthand when composing.

Perhaps nowhere else can we see as clearly as in shorthand the attempt to create writing that is both practical and beautiful. Specifically: twenty words per minute is the average speed for writing; when using shorthand, speeds in excess of 280 wpm have been recorded. And Gregg Shorthand, for instance, has a graceful, appealing visual quality often missing from alphabet-based writing.

How, we might wonder, does shorthand achieve such improvements in speed and visual quality? Simplified spelling, dropped vowels, distinctions between stroke-length and thickness, and phonemic orthography are some of the techniques employed. And individual stenographers (people whose use shorthand) often introduce specific improvements and accommodations into their writing method.

In other words, shorthand allows personalized writing–which can lead to problems in reading. Some shorthands address this problem by using the standard alphabet for the language they record, a solution that also makes the system easier to learn. But alphabet and abjad-based shorthands are inevitably more difficult to write, reducing compositional speed. That is the nub of the problem with shorthand (or any writing system): the trade-offs between speed, fluency, and legibility. Letterforms that are more difficult to write are usually easier to read.

The final point to make when talking about alternative or simplified writing systems: improvements in composition, whether in writing or in ease of reading, result from better instruction. Having both the traditional writing system and an alternative, phonetic shorthand or alphabet at our disposal will increase the intelligence and ease with which we transcribe information, argument, and feeling.

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Image: Pitman-2000 Example; WikiCommons; Public Domain

Is Cursive Obsolete?

 

Some worthwhile thoughts from a teacher in Seattle. Enjoy!   RT

Is Cursive Obsolete?.

Phonetics: Surf’s Up!

 

Phonetics: this is the most scientific of the Dragons of Grammar. It is the study of the sounds that people make–the study of the sounds themselves, not of the way that the mind forms or breaks them down for their meaning. Phonetics is the foundation of grammar, since it looks at the raw data that language is built of and the way that it is produced by the mouth, travels through the air, and is received by the ear.

Phonetics is broken down into three subfields: 1) Articulatory phonetics (the way that the lungs, throat, and mouth produce sounds); 2) Acoustic phonetics (the physical properties of human speech); and 3) Auditory phonetics (the way that the ear receives speech sounds). Another way to think of this is that phonetics breaks down the path of speech from lung to mouth to ear into three parts. And there’s no getting around it, folks: we’re down in the basement of grammar, peering into distant caves and tunnels, coming up occasionally to surf on streams of air.

Hmmm. Not everyone is into spelunking or surfing. But phonetics introduces distinctions that are vital to fully understanding the International Phonetic Alphabet–distinctions that make the IPA unintelligible at first glance.

So Team Leader RT says: grab your waterproof outfits, find that old handpick and rope in the attic, and borrow a surf board if you don’t already own one!!

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Let’s look at some details of the phonetics subfields:

1) Articulatory. Speech begins with an airflow generated in our lungs (and thus called pulmonic) and directed up through the trachea (or windpipe) into the larynx (or voicebox). The larynx manipulates the airflow to produce volume and pitch (that is, how loud and how squeeky or rumbling our words sound). This basic sound then travels through the vocal tract where it is further shaped by the pharynx, the mouth, tongue, and lips. In the vocal tract, the sound is refined into consonants or vowels and acquires stress and tone. At this point, the sound has become a word, ready for passage through the air to its audience. Hurray!!

Fundamental Frequencies

2) Acoustic. Once a word has been spoken, it exists as a series of waves travelling through the air. Any wave has height (or amplitude) and length (duration). Any series of waves has frequency and resonance. Frequency (or frequencies, since more than one is always involved) is the number of times the wave occurs per unit of time; resonance is the tendency of waves to bunch or scrunch up at certain frequencies–so that these parts of the wave series are louder.

Waves can be deceptive–on paper they look well-defined and predictable, but in fact are loaded with nuances like voice quality and prosody. These details can reveal a speaker’s emotional state, indicate the kind of communication being made (e.g., statement, question, or command), and the presence of irony or sarcasm. People have learned to pack their sounds with meanings and implications.

3) Auditory. To decipher the bundle of intricate information contained in sound waves moving through air, the ear has developed an equally intricate system of hearing. The human ear is divided into the outer, middle, and inner ears. The outer ear (the part of the ear protruding out from the head, also called the “pinna,” and the auditory canal as far as the outer layer of the eardrum, or tympanic membrane) helps collect the physical sounds of speech and amplify them. The middle ear (located behind the eardrum) consists of three bones (the maleus, the incus, and the stapes) which successively transmit the motions sensed by the ear drum to the inner ear. In the middle ear, one of the more amazing things in hearing happens: the energy of speech, which has up til this point existed in air, will now be carried in the liquid-filled inner ear. The inner ear consists of the semi-circular canals (which enable us to maintain our balance); the vestibule (which transmits and equalizes the energy waves transmitted to it via the stapes to the SCC and  a membrane called the round window); and the cochlea, which contains sensory filaments that, when moved by the pressure waves transmitted from the round window, fire, sending neurosignals via the cochlear nerve to the brain.

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Intricate it is, but the essential elements of speech and hearing are well understood, enabling the creation of speech recognition systems that accurately transcribe normal speech into digital information about 95 percent of the time. But the key word here is normal; variation in accent, volume, and local acoustic conditions can throw these systems off. So robots that understand what we say probably won’t show up for some time.

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Whew! The expedition is over, and we have travelled where few (consciously) have ventured. Poets, however wedded to the written word, should always bear in mind the immense variety and subtleties of spoken language, a resource that will take their verses to new and amazing places.     RT

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Images. Surfer: Marine Kris Burgmeister surfing in Hawaii, WikiCmns, Public Domain; Speech Passages & Cavities, WikiCmns, Public Domain; Fundamental Frequencies, WikiCmns, Public Domain; Diagram of Ear, Author–Chittka L. Brockmann, WikiCmns, CC 2.5.

Mighty Mice Redux–the IPA for English Speakers

 

Council of Mice, Hokusai, 18th century

The most amazing thing about language may not be its diversity of sound; it may be its precision. The multiplicity of sounds and meanings that we produce are made possible by a skill that we start learning the day we are born and that continues to mature thoughout life.

I enjoy poking fun at linguistics, its practitioners, and the terms they invent, but, to be fair, the subject is vast and not without its political ramifications. For the most part, it is not lack of knowledge or ideas that holds back the improvement of language skills, but the widespread misconception that language skills are not important (and that anyone can master them easily).

And here, at least, is one way to make the task of mastering the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) easier: an IPA chart for English speakers. (the Dragons of Grammar strike again!) Enjoy learning more about the various critters and crawlies that make up human speech!

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IPA Chart for English Speakers

(Words in small capitals are the standard lexical sets. Words in the lexical sets bath and cloth are given two transcriptions, respectively one with /ɑː/ and one with /æ/, and with /ɒ/ and /ɔː/).

Consonants IPA Examples b buy, cab d die, cad ð thy, breathe, father dʒ giant, badge, jam f phi, caff, fan ɡ (ɡ)[1] guy, bag h high, ahead j yes, yacht k sky, crack l lie, sly, gal m my, smile, cam n nigh, snide, can ŋ sang, sink, singer ŋɡ finger, anger θ thigh, math p pie, spy, cap r rye, try, very[2] s sigh, mass ʃ shy, cash, emotion t tie, sty, cat, atom tʃ China, catch v vie, have w wye, swine hw why[3] z xi, zoo, has ʒ pleasure, vision, beige[4] Marginal consonants x ugh, loch, Chanukah[5] ʔ uh-oh /ˈʌʔoʊ/

Vowels IPA Full vowels … followed by R[6][7] ɑː palm, baht, father, bra ɑr start, bard, barn, snarl, star (also /ɑːr./) ɒ lot, pod, song, doll[8] ɒr moral, forage æ trap, pad, shall, ban ær barrow, marry aɪ price, ride, file, fine, pie[9] aɪər fire (/aɪr./)[7] aʊ mouth, loud, foul, down, how aʊər hour (/aʊr./)[7] ɛ dress, bed, fell, men[10] ɛr error, merry[11] eɪ face, made, fail, vein, pay ɛər square, scared, scarce, cairn, Mary (/eɪr./)[12][7] ɪ kit, lid, fill, bin ɪr mirror, Sirius iː fleece, seed, feel, mean, sea ɪər near, beard, fierce, serious (/iːr./) ɔː thought, Maud, dawn, fall, straw[13] ɔr north, born, for, aural (/ɔːr./) ɔɪ choice, void, foil, coin, boy ɔɪər loir, coir (/ɔɪr./)[7] oʊ goat, code, foal, bone, go[14] ɔər force, boar, more, oral (/oʊr./)[15] ʊ foot, good, full, woman ʊr courier uː goose, food, fool, soon, chew ʊər boor, moor, tourist (/uːr./)[16] juː cued, cute, mule, tune, queue[17] jʊər cure ʌ strut, mud, dull, gun[18] ʌr borough, hurry ɜr nurse, word, girl, fern, furry (/ɝː/)[19] Reduced vowels ə Rosa’s, a mission, comma ər letter, perform (also /ɚ/)[19] ɨ roses, emission[20] (either ɪ or ə) ən button ɵ omission[21] (either oʊ or ə) əm rhythm ʉ beautiful, curriculum ([jʉ])[22] (either ʊ or ə) əl bottle i happy, serious[23] (either ɪ or iː) ᵊ, ⁱ (vowel is frequently dropped: nasturtium)   Stress Syllabification IPA Examples IPA Examples ˈ intonation /ˌɪntɵˈneɪʃən/,[24] battleship /ˈbætəlʃɪp/[25] . shellfish /ˈʃɛl.fɪʃ/, selfish /ˈsɛlf.ɨʃ/ nitrate /ˈnaɪ.treɪt/, night-rate /ˈnaɪt.reɪt/ hire /ˈhaɪər/, higher /ˈhaɪ.ər/ moai /ˈmoʊ.aɪ/, Windhoek /ˈvɪnt.hʊk/ Vancouveria /væn.kuːˈvɪəriə/[26] ˌ

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Mice Bury the Cat, Russian, 18th century

Both images: WikiCmns, Public Domain;

Chart: WikiP, CC3.0, Author: Wikipedia: IPA for English

Varmints! What to Do With Squigglies and Squeakies

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The other night, while working on one of my midnight-inspired posts, I heard mice squeaking and eeaking away in the kitchen (we feed our cat too well to get rid of them). I wondered what they were saying, and I suddenly was reminded of the dilemma presented by pronunciation marks–accents, grave or acute; carons; umlauts; hooks; horns; and rings. And, even worse, what about all those weird letters, turned upside down, with lines through them, superscripted (and turned upside down!), the capital “A” that’s missing its middle stroke, and that “n” with a hang nail! Varmints! Every single one–we’re just going to have to hire a literary cat and chase them all back to whatever hidey hole they came from…

So, it’s a beautiful morning, and I’m being silly…

1) The formal name for pronunciation marks in English is diacritics. You will be happy to recall from your reading that English has followed our good friend’s advice and chased out nearly all the diacritics from its orthography. The single exception of any note is the accent breve (as in è): cafè, resumè, soufflè (and note that these examples are loan-words from French).

But, alas and alack, other languages have not been so frugal in their use of diacritics, and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) makes use of them all the time–this may have something to do with the fact that people are capable of producing a virtually unlimited variety of sounds. Even the range of sounds included in the world’s 250 or so languages is enormous. By abandoning diacritics, English speakers (and Americans in particular) have made it very difficult to decipher our speech sounds from written text.

2) From an entirely sober perspective, diacritics may not be the only way to remedy the semi-phonetic difficulties of the Roman Alphabet. We could adopt the Shaw Script (or any of the other English alphabets designed to be fully phonetic), which adopts the one-sound-one-letter principle. Whether a diacritic- or letterform-based phonetic reform of our current alphabet would be easier to read and learn is unclear. And which would be easier to implement on keyboards, signs, and so forth?

3) Since the IPA is one of the Rag Tree’s themes, and to help in the project of getting people from different countries to understand one another, I’m going to include a list of writing’s squiggles and squeaks. (Reader, beware: diacritics really do act like mice; they are tricky, having different uses in different languages–or within a language. I give a simplified explanation of a common usage in a language familiar to English speakers.)

DIACRITICS

• accent marks (thus called because the acute, the grave and the circumflex accent were originally used to indicate different types of pitch accents, in the polytonic orthography of Greek)
  • ( ´ ) acute accent; Spn, vwl is to be stressed
  • ( ˋ ) grave accent; Eng, indicates vwl is to be spoken
  • ( ˆ ) circumflex accent (Slovak vokáň)
  • ( ˇ ) caron, inverted circumflex, (Czech háček, Slovak mäkčeň, Slovene strešica, Lakota ičášleče)
  • ( ˝ ) double acute accent
  • (  ̏ ) double grave accent
• dots
  • ( ˙ ), ( . ) dot (Indic anusvara)
  • (  ̣ ) a dot below is used in Rheinische Dokumenta
  • ( · ) Interpunct
  • tittle, the dot used by default in the modern lowercase form of the Latin letters “i” and “j”
  • ( ¨ ) trema, diaeresis; Frn, vwl is to be spoken
  • ( ː ) colon, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to mark long vowels.
• ring
  • ( ˚ ) ring (Swed kål); ovr “a”, lengthens the vwl

  

• vertical line
  • (  ̩ ) a vertical line below is used in Rheinische Dokumenta as a schwa mark
• macron or horizontal line
  • ( ¯ ) macron (Hawaiian kahakō, Māori tohutō)
  • ( ˍ ) macron below
• overlays
  • ( | ) bar through the basic letter
  • ( / ) slash through the basic letter
  • ( – ) stroke through the basic letter
• curves
  • ( ˘ ) breve
  • sicilicus, a palaeographic diacritic similar to a caron or breve
  • ( ˜ ) tilde; Spn, indicates an omitted “n” follows
  • (  ҃ ) titlo
• curls above
  • ( ’ ) apostrophe
  • (  ̉ ) hook (Vietnamese dấu hỏi)
  • (  ̛ ) horn (Vietnamese dấu móc)
• curls below
  • ( , ) comma
  • ( ¸ ) cedilla
  • ( ˛ ) ogonek
• double marks (over or under two base characters)
  • (  ͝  ) double breve
  • (  ͡  ) ligature tie
  • (  ᷍  ) double circumflex
  • (  ͞  ) double macron
  • (  ͠  ) double tilde
  • (  ͢  ) double rightward arrow

Please note: The tilde, dot, comma, titlo, apostrophe, bar, and colon are sometimes diacritics, but also have other uses.

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Photo: A house mouse, NIH, WikiCmns, Public Domain

Chart: Wikipedia, Public Domain