system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why does the modern English language curiously lack diacritics compared to other languages that use the Latin alphabet?

Why does it lack accent marks, umlauts, breves, etc. Or, are there other, lesser known languages with this alphabet that don't use diacritics?
gpt
The most surface-level answer is because English uses digraphs extensively instead. Sounds like th, the other th, ph, gh (which used to be a specific sound), Sh, and vowel combinations like oo, ou, and x_e (where x is a vowel), take the place of what might otherwise be ç, š, ž, á, ö, etc.

English used to have four additional consonant letters to reflect sounds not in Latin but those were replaced with digraphs or w (th, th, gh, w).

An additional reason is because at the time that English spelling was starting to become entrenched (about 1450, invention of movable type), there were fewer vowels in the language, so there was no need (except to show stress, which English typists did not feel was necessary—even in Spanish it only became widespread/obligatory later on). Because of the great vowel shift and other sound changes, vowels in English got REALLY weird, but the spelling more or less stayed the same. (Not entirely, there were some shifts in spelling.)

There are certainly other languages that do not use diacritics, and yes they are not as well known.