The 'acute accent' ( '' ) is a
diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with
alphabets based on the
Latin and
Greek scripts. The word ''acute'' is derived from the
Latin ''acutus'' ("sharp"), itself a
loan translation of the
Greek (''oxýs'').
Pitch
The acute accent was first used in the
polytonic orthography of
Ancient Greek, where it indicated a syllable with a high
pitch. Modern Greek has a
stress accent instead of a pitch accent, so the diacritic is now used to mark the stressed vowel of a word.
Another early precursor of the acute accent was the
apex, used in
Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.
Stress
The acute accent marks the
stressed vowel of a word in several languages:
★
Catalan. Used in stressed
high vowels: ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú''.
★
Dutch. Used to disambiguate between words that differ only in stress (''vóórkomen'' – ''voorkómen'') or openness (''hé'' – ''hè''; ''één'' – ''een'') where this is not otherwise reflected in the spelling.
★
Galician
★
Modern Greek, where it marks the stressed vowel of every
polysyllabic word.
★
Occitan. Used in stressed
high vowels: ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú''.
★
Portuguese. On the letters ''a'', ''e'', and ''o'', it also indicates height (see below).
★
Russian. When it is required (i.e. in dictionaries, books for children or foreigners), stress is indicated by an acute accent.
★
Spanish. It may also be used to distinguish between similar words with different meanings. See below.
★
Swedish. The acute accent is used to indicate that a terminal syllable with the vowel e is stressed, and is often written out only when it changes the meaning. For example ''ide'' "bear's nest" vs. ''idé'' "idea"; ''armen'' "the arm" vs. ''armén'' "the army" — in both cases the first syllable is stressed without the accent. An acute accent written over any other vowel would probably be similarly interpreted as indicating the stressed syllable by Swedish-speakers, but there are no such words in Swedish.
★
Welsh. Word stress always falls on the penultimate syllable, unless indicated otherwise by the use of an acute accent on the stressed vowel; this can be on an ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú'', ''ẃ'', or ''ý''. For example ''casáu'' "to hate", ''caniatáu'' "to allow, to permit".
Height
The acute accent marks the
height of some stressed vowels in various
Romance languages.
★ To mark high vowels:
★
★
Catalan. The acute marks the quality of the vowels ''é'' (as opposed to ''è'' ), and ''ó'' (as opposed to ''ò'' ).
★
★
French. Used only on ''é''. It is known as ''
accent aigu'', and distinguishes ''é'' from ''è'' , ''ê'', and ''e'' .
★
★
Italian. The acute accent is compulsory only in words of more than one syllable stressed on their final vowel (and a few other words), and there are hardly any words ending in . Therefore, only ''é'' is normally seen in normal text, typically in words ending in ''-ché'', such as ''perché'' "why/because"; in ambiguous monosyllables such as ''né'' 'neither' ''vs.'' ''ne'' 'of it' and ''sé'' 'itself' ''vs.'' ''se'' 'if'; and some verb forms, ''e.g.'' 'vedé'. The symbol ''ó'' can be used for disambiguation, for instance between ''bótte'', "barrel", and ''bòtte'', "beating", though this is not mandatory, and rarely used in Italian writing.
★
★
Occitan. The acute marks the quality of the vowels ''é'' (as opposed to ''è'' ), ''ó'' (as opposed to ''ò'' ) and ''á'' (as opposed to ''à'' ).
★ To mark low vowels:
★
★
Portuguese. The vowels ''á'', ''é'', ''ó'' are low.
Length
The acute accent marks
long vowels in several languages:
★
Czech. To indicate a long ''u'' in the middle or at the end of a word, a
''kroužek'' (ring) is used instead, to form ''ů''.
★
Hungarian
★
Irish. The acute accent is known as a ''síneadh fada'' in this language.
★
Slovak. This language has also two more "long vowels" (which are consonants in the alphabet, but vowels in terms of their function): ''ŕ'' and ''ĺ'', which are pronounced just like ordinary
syllabic ''r'' and ''l'', only longer.
Palatalization
On consonant letters, the acute accent often represents a
palatalized sound.
In
Polish, the acute accent is used over several letters—four consonants and one vowel. Over the consonants, it is used to indicate
palatalization, similar to the use of
háček in
Czech and other Slavic languages; e.g. ''sześć'' // (six) However, the Polish ''
kreska'' is traditionally more nearly vertical than the acute, and placed slightly right of center.
[1]
In
Bosnian,
Croatian,
Serbian and
Macedonian the letter 'ć' is used to represent a palatalized "t" sound.
Tone
In some
tonal languages written with the Latin alphabet, such as
Vietnamese written in the standard Quốc Ngữ system, and
Mandarin Chinese written in the
Pinyin romanization, the acute accent is used to indicate a rising
tone.
In
African languages, it frequently marks a high tone, e.g.
Yoruba ''apá'' 'arm',
Nobiin ''féntí'' 'sweet date',
Ekoti ''kaláwa'' 'boat'.
Disambiguation
The acute accent is used to disambiguate certain words which would otherwise be
homographs in the following languages:
★
Danish. Examples: ''én'' "one" vs. ''en'' "a/an"; ''fór'' "went" vs. ''for'' "for"; ''véd'' "know(s)" vs. ''ved'' "by"; ''gǿr'' "bark(s)" vs. ''gør'' "do(es)"; ''dǿr'' "die(s)" vs. ''dør'' "door"; ''allé'' "alley" vs. ''alle'' "everybody".
Furthermore, it is also used for the imperative form of verbs ending in ''-ere'', which lose their final ''e'' and might be mistaken for plurals of a noun (which most often end in ''-er''): ''analysér'' is the imperative form of ''at analysere'' "to analyse", ''analyser'' is "analyses", plural of the noun ''analyse'' "analysis".
★
Dutch. It mainly distinguishes ''één'' "one" from ''een'' "a/an".
★
Norwegian. It's not used for the imperative form of verbs ending in ''-ere'' like it is in Danish: ''kontroller'' is the imperative form of "to control", ''kontroller'' is the noun "controls". The simple past of the (disused) verb ''å fare'', "to travel", is ''fór'', to distinguish it from ''for'' ("for" as in English).
★
Spanish. Covers various question word / relative pronoun pairs, such as ''cómo'' (interrogative "how") and ''como'' (non-interrogative "how", comparative "like", verb "I eat"), differenciates ''qué'' (what) from ''que'' (that), ''dónde'' and ''donde'' "where", and some other words such as ''tú'' "you" and ''tu'' "your," ''él'' "he/him" and ''el'' ("the", masculine).
Emphasis
In Dutch, the acute accent can also be used to emphasize an individual word within a sentence. For example, "''Het is ónze auto, niet die van jullie''." ("This is ''our'' car, not yours.") In this example, ''ónze'' is merely an emphasized form of ''onze''.
In
Danish, the acute accent can also be used for
emphasis, especially on the word ''der'' (there), ex. "''Der kan ikke være mange mennesker dér''," meaning "There can't be many people '''there'''" or "''Dér skal vi hen''" meaning "'''That''s where we're going".
Letter extension
★ In
Faroese, the acute accent is used on 5 of the vowels (a, i, o, u and y), but these letters, á, í, ó, ú and ý are considered separate letters with separate pronunciations.
: á: long , short and before :
: í/ý: long , short
: ó: long , or , short: , except Suðuroy:
:: When ó is followed by the skerping -gv, it is pronounced , except in Suðuroy where it is
: ú: long , short
:: When ú is followed by the skerping -gv, it is pronounced
★ In
Icelandic the acute accent is used on 6 of the vowels (a, e, i, o, u and y), and, as in Faroese, these are considered separate letters.
: á:
: é: long , short
: í/ý:
: ó:
: ú:
:All can be either short or long, but note that the pronunciation of ''é'' is not the same short and long.
: Etymologically, vowels with an acute accent in these languages correspond to their
Old Norse counterparts, which were long vowels but in many cases have become
diphthongs. The only exception is é, which in Faroese has become
æ.
★ In
Polish, the acute on "ó" indicates a pronunciation change into , and historically it used to indicate that the vowel was long.
★ In
Turkmen, the letter Ý is a consonant: [j].
Other uses
★ In transliterating texts written in
Cuneiform, an acute accent over the vowel indicates that the original sign is the second representing that value in the canonical lists. Thus ''su'' is used to transliterate the first sign with the phonetic value /su/, while ''sú'' transliterates the second sign with the value /su/.
★ Many
Norwegian words of French origin retain an acute accent, such as ''allé'', ''kafé'', ''idé'', ''komité''. Popular usage can be sketchy and often neglects the accent, and there exists a certain degree of interchangeability with the grave accent. Likewise, in
Swedish, the acute accent is used only for the letter ''e'', mostly in words of French origin and in some names. It is used both to indicate a change in vowel quantity as well as quality and that the stress should be on this, normally unstressed, syllable. Examples include ''café'' ("café") and ''resumé'' ("resumé", noun). There are two pairs of
homographs that are differentiated only by the accent: ''armé'' ("army") versus ''arme'' ("poor; pitiful", masculine gender) and ''idé'' ("idea") versus ''ide'' ("winter quarters").
Use in English
As with other diacritical marks, a number of
loanwords are sometimes spelled in English with an acute accent used in the original language: these include ''sauté'', ''roué'', ''café'', ''touché'', ''fiancé'', and ''fiancée'' but many consider this nonstandard. Retention of the accent is common only in the
French ending ''é'' or ''ée'', as in these examples, where its absence would tend to suggest a different pronunciation. Thus the French word ''résumé'' is commonly seen in English as ''resumé'', with only one accent (note that this is a
false cognate, as in French "résumé" means summary and a resumé in English is a
CV).
For foreign terms used in English that have not been assimilated into English or are not in general English usage,
italics are generally used with the appropriate accents: for example, ''
adiós'', ''
coup d'état'', ''
pièce de résistance'', ''
crème brûlée''.
Accents are sometimes also used for poetic purposes, to indicate an unusual pronunciation: for example, spelling the word ''picked'' (normally ) as ''pickéd'' to indicate the pronunciation . The
grave accent is also sometimes used for this purpose.
Technical notes
The
ISO-8859-1 and
extended ASCII character encodings include the letters ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú'', ''ý'', and their respective
capital forms. Dozens more letters with the acute accent are available in
Unicode. Unicode also provides the acute accent as a separate character U+00B4 and a
combining character, U+0301.
On Windows computers, letters with acute accents can be created by holding down the alt key and typing in a three-number code on the number pad to the right of the keyboard before releasing the alt key. Before the appearance of Spanish keyboards, Spanish speakers had to learn these codes if they wanted to be able to write acute accents, though some preferred using the Microsoft Word spell checker to add the accent for them. The codes are:
★ 160 for á
★ 130 for é
★ 161 for í
★ 162 for ó
★ 163 for ú
On a UK Keyboard layout, these letters can also be made by holding Ctrl+Alt (or Alt Gr) and the desired letter.
Some sites, such as Wikipedia or the
babelfish automatic translator allow inserting such symbols by clicking on a link in a box.
On a Macintosh, an acute accent is placed on a vowel by pressing Option-e and then the vowel, which can also be capitalised; for example, á is formed by pressing Option-e and then 'a', and Á is formed by pressing Option-e and then Shift-a.
Notes
1. Polish Diacritics: Kreska: Not exactly acute
See also
Letters with an acute accent
★
Ć
★
★
Ś
★
Ź
Related topics
★
Apex (diacritic)
★
Grave accent
★
Circumflex accent
★
Double acute accent
★
Kreska, in Polish orthography
External links
★
Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
★
Keyboard Help - Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer
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