In Afrikaans, the trema is mostly used to indicate that the vowel should not be diphthongised, for example geër is pronounced, whilst geer is pronounced. There are some cases where the deelteken does nothing to the pronunciation, like in reën, which is pronounced. The non-existent word *reen would be pronounced the same. The deelteken in this case has only a historical background; the archaic form of reën is regen and the deelteken indicates that the g was removed. Some older people still pronounce reën in two syllables. The deelteken does exactly what it says. It separates syllables, as it indicates the start of a new one. An example of this is the wordvoël, which is pronounced in two syllables. Without it, the word would become voel, which is pronounced in one syllable.
Ë is a phonetic symbol also used in the transcription of Abruzzese dialects and in the Province of Ascoli Piceno. It is called "mute E" and sounds like a hummed é. It is important for the prosody of the dialect itself.
Emilian-Romagnol
Ë is used in Romagnol to represent , e.g. fradël "brother". In some peripheral Emilian dialects, ë is used to represent , e.g. strëtt "narrow".
English
Use of the character Ë in the English language is relatively rare. Some publications, such as the American magazineThe New Yorker, use it more often than others. It is used to indicate that the e is to be pronounced separately from the preceding vowel, or at all - like in the name of the Brontë sisters, where without diaeresis the final e would be mute.
Filipino
French and Dutch
Ë appears in words like French Noël and Dutch koloniën. This so-called trema is used to indicate that the vowel should not be monophthonged. For example, Noël is pronounced, whilst *Noel would be pronounced. Likewise, "koloniën" is pronounced, whilst "*kolonien" would be pronounced.
Hungarian
Ë does not belong to the officialHungarian alphabet, but is usually applied in folklore notations and sometimes also in stylistic writing, e.g. is extensively used in the vocal oeuvre of Kodály. The reason is that open e and closed ë are distinguished in most spoken dialects, but is not indicated in writing because of the history of writing and due to little but observable areal variation.
In many editions of Latin texts, the diaeresis is used to indicate that ae and oe form a hiatus, not a diphthong or a monophthong. Examples: aër "air", poëta "poet", coërcere "to coerce".
Luxembourgish
In Luxembourgish, is used for stressed schwa like in the word ëmmer. It is also used to indicate a morphological plural ending after two such as in eeër or leeën.
In some Latin transliterations of Russian, ë is used for its homoglyphё, representing a, as in Potëmkin to render the Cyrillic Потёмкин. Other translations use yo, jo or simply e.
Syriac
In the romanization of Syriac, the letter Ë gives a schwa. In some grammatical constructions, it is a replacement for the other, original vowels. Example words that have Ë: knoṭër, krëhṭi, krëqdo, sxërla, gfolëḥ, madënḥo, mën, ašër. Turoyo and Assyrian languages may utilize this diacritic, albeit rarely.
In Tagalog and its standardized form Filipino, Ë is used to represent the schwa, particularly in words originating from other Philippine languages, for instance Maranao, Pangasinan, Ilocano, and Ibaloi. Before introduction of this letter, schwa was ambiguously represented by A or E.
