Appendix:English alphabet

The English language uses the twenty-six Latin script basic 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.

English Wikipedia has an article on:

English words with diacritics

Wikipedia

Certain classes of words are, or were formerly, written with diacritics. One such class is certain words borrowed from other languages, including the words café, façade, Führer and naïve.

Another class uses diaeresis to indicate in a pairing of identical vowels that the second vowel is to be pronounced separately from the first. In this case, the second vowel is either pronounced differently, as in reëxamine, or just pronounced separately with a slight hiatus or y sound, as in reëlect.

This list of words that may be spelled with a ligature in English encompasses words which have letters that may, in modern usage, either be rendered as two distinct letters or as a single, combined letter. This includes AE being rendered as Æ (an æsc or ash) and OE being rendered as Œ (an œthel). Note that when a c is before a ligature, it makes the sound /s/ rather than /k/ as might be expected (because it has the pronunciation of e).

The use of the œ and æ is obsolescent in modern English, and has been used predominantly in British English. It is usually used to evoke archaism, or in literal quotations of historic sources.

The fl and fi ligatures, among others, are still commonly used to render modern text in fine typography. Programs such as QuarkXpress and Adobe InDesign can be configured to automatically replace the individual characters with the appropriate ligatures.

Note that some words contain an ae which may not be written æ because the etymology is not from the Greek -αι- or Latin -ae- diphthongs. These include:

• In instances of aer (starting or within a word) where it comes from the Latin āēr (“air”), from Greek ἀήρ (aḗr), e.g. aerial, aeroplane.
• When ae is found in a word that comes from some other language other than Latin or Greek, e.g. Gaelic, laendler.

Also, ligatures may be used in personal names as well, ie. Maecenus as Mæcenus, or Bartholomaeus as Bartholomæus, etc.

• Wiktionary:Requested entries (English)/diacritics and ligatures