The Diaeresis: ë, ï, ö, ü

The two little dots over a vowel in reën, geëet, oë or beïnvloed have a single, precise job, and once you know it the marker becomes completely predictable. The Afrikaans diaeresis — the deelteken, literally "dividing sign" — tells you that the marked vowel begins a new syllable rather than fusing with the vowel before it into a digraph or diphthong. It is a hiatus marker: it forces a syllable break where two vowels meet. Crucially, it does not change the colour of the vowel — that is the job of the circumflex — so do not confuse the deelteken with the German umlaut, which does exactly the opposite. This page shows you how to read every diaeresis correctly and why you can predict where one belongs.

The core job: split two vowels apart

Afrikaans, like English, has rules for what a pair of vowel letters means together. ee is a long single vowel; oo is a long single vowel; eu, oe, ei are fixed combinations. So when two vowels that would normally combine actually belong to separate syllables, the language needs a way to say "read these apart." That signal is the diaeresis, placed on the second of the two vowels.

Take reën (rain). Without the dots, reen would invite you to read ee as one long vowel — "reen," one syllable. The diaeresis breaks that: re-ën, two syllables, roughly [ˈrɪə(n)] / [ˈre.ən] depending on speaker, with a clear glide from one vowel into the next. The word reen simply does not exist; the dots are not optional.

Worked examples across the pattern

geëet — past participle of eet

When the past-tense prefix ge- attaches to a verb beginning with e (eet, to eat), you get ge + eet → geëet. Three e's in a row would be unreadable, and even two (geeet) would invite ee to fuse. The diaeresis on the second e keeps the prefix's ge- separate from the stem's eet: ge-ëet, [xəˈeːt], "ghe-eat." The same happens with any vowel-initial stem after a vowel-final prefix.

oë — plural of oog

Many nouns ending in a vowel + consonant lose the consonant in the plural and bring two vowels into contact. oog (eye) → oë (eyes): the g drops and o + e would otherwise read as the combination oe [u]. The diaeresis forces o-ë, two syllables [ˈoə]. The same logic gives koei → koeie stays as is, but kraai → kraaie, and notably plurals like this are a whole predictable class — see plurals with a diaeresis.

beïnvloed — the i in a prefix boundary

beïnvloed (to influence) is be + invloed. Without the dots, beinvloed tempts a reader to see ei [əi], the diphthong in ei (egg). The diaeresis on the i blocks that: be-ïn-vloed, with the i opening its own syllable, [bəˈɪnflut]. This is the deelteken protecting a vowel from being swallowed by a diphthong.

koöperasie — the o in a learned word

koöperasie (cooperation) is ko + operasie. Koo would read as a long oo; the diaeresis on the second o splits them: ko-ö-pe-ra-sie, [kʊəpəˈrɑːsi]. International and learned words that bring two of the same vowel together rely on this constantly: koördineer (coordinate), reëls (rules), reünie (reunion, with ü).

The four diaeresis letters

Afrikaans uses the diaeresis on ë, ï, ö, ü. They differ only in which vowel is being kept separate; the function is identical in every case.

Why it is NOT the German umlaut

This is the single most important warning for anyone who has touched German, Turkish, or Hungarian. In those languages the two dots are an umlaut: they change the vowel's sound (German Mutter [ʊ] vs Mütter [ʏ]). The Afrikaans deelteken does nothing to the vowel's quality. The ë in reën is the same e sound it always was — it has merely been pushed into its own syllable. The dots mark syllabification, not vowel colour.

That distinction also separates the deelteken from the Afrikaans circumflex (ê, ô, î, û), which does change vowel quality — ê and ô mark long, open vowels, as in wêreld and môre. So Afrikaans has two diacritics doing two different jobs: the circumflex changes the sound, the diaeresis changes the syllable count. Don't mix them up. See circumflex vowels for the quality contrast.

It is predictable — and it moves

Because the deelteken is only a hiatus marker, you can predict it: it appears exactly where two vowels meet across a morpheme or syllable boundary and would otherwise misread as a digraph or diphthong. This is why it clusters in two grammatical places: plurals of vowel-final-ish stems (oog → oë, see → seë) and past participles / prefixed words where ge-, be-, ge- meet a vowel-initial stem (geëet, beïnvloed).

And because it tracks syllable structure, it disappears or moves when that structure changes. If a consonant is reinserted, or the vowels no longer touch, the dots are no longer needed. The diaeresis is never a fixed property of a vowel — it is a property of the position, and positions change with inflection.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• The diaeresis (deelteken) is a hiatus marker: it splits two vowels into separate syllables — reën = re-ën, geëet = ge-ëet, oë = o-ë.
• It sits on the second vowel of the pair and means "start a new syllable here."
• It does not change the vowel's sound — unlike the German umlaut. Quality changes are the circumflex's job (ê, ô).
• It is predictable: it appears where vowels meet across a boundary, especially in plurals (oë, seë) and prefixed/participle forms (geëet, beïnvloed).
• It moves or vanishes when the syllable structure changes — it marks a position, not a fixed vowel.