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The two dots here are not an umlaut. They're a trema [0], which happens to look the same. It's used to break digraphs or diphtongs into separate vowels.

Without the trema, this word would be pronounced something like "/emo/". With it, it's pronounced "/ema.yz/".

If you see two dots in French, Spanish, Portuguese (and English as written by The New Yorker!) you're looking at a trema.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)




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