If I am speaking about a letter that has a diacritical mark (e.g. 'á'), what word or phrase should I use to reference the base letter (e.g. 'a')? I'm looking for something a little more concise than "the letter that it modifies" or "the letter that it is added to". I couldn't find anything helpful from Googling, and a cursory look through the Wikipedia article on diacritics didn't reveal any usage of such a word.
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Character? grapheme?– 0MM0Commented Feb 26, 2015 at 21:09
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@Mary Those work well for letters in general, but I'm looking for something specific to the context of diacritics.– HydrothermalCommented Feb 26, 2015 at 21:10
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The modified letter?– David GarnerCommented Feb 26, 2015 at 21:14
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1 Answer
The correct term for this in Unicodese is grapheme base.
Note that characters which are respectively considered diacritic, non-spacing combining mark, and grapheme extend characters are all slightly different. It would take a Venn diagram to show the overlap, though.
See this question, its answers, and the standards documents referenced therein.
