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| ◌̀ | |
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Grave accent | |
| U+0300 ◌̀COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT (diacritic) | |
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⟨ ⟩,| |,/ /, and[ ]are used here, seethis page.Thegrave accent (◌̀) (/ɡreɪv/GRAYV[1][2] or/ɡrɑːv/GRAHV[1][2]) is adiacritical mark used to varying degrees inFrench,Dutch,Portuguese,Italian,Catalan and many other western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses inEnglish. It is also used in other languages using the Latin alphabet, such asMohawk andYoruba, and with non-Latin writing systems such as theGreek andCyrillic alphabets and theBopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhaosemi-syllabary. It has no single meaning, but can indicate pitch, stress, or other features.
For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets,precomposed characters are available. For less-used and compound diacritics, acombining character facility is available. A free-standing version of the symbol (`), commonly called abacktick, also exists and has acquired other uses.
The grave accent first appeared in thepolytonic orthography ofAncient Greek to mark a lowerpitch than the high pitch of theacute accent. In modern practice, it replaces an acute accent in the last syllable of a word when that word is followed immediately by another word. The grave andcircumflex have been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.
The accent mark was calledβαρεῖα, the feminine form of the adjectiveβαρύς (barús), meaning 'heavy' or 'low in pitch'. This wascalqued (loan-translated) intoLatin asgravis which then became the English wordgrave.
The grave accent marks thestressed vowels of words inMaltese,Catalan, andItalian.
A general rule inItalian is that words that end with stressed-a,-i, or-u must be marked with a grave accent. Words that end with stressed-e or-o may bear either anacute accent or a grave accent, depending on whether the finale oro sound isclosed oropen, respectively. Some examples of words with a final grave accent arecittà ('city'),così ('so/then/thus'),più ('more, plus'),Mosè ('Moses'), andportò ('[he/she/it] brought/carried'). Typists who use a keyboard without accented characters and are unfamiliar withinput methods for typing accented letters sometimes use a separate grave accent or even anapostrophe instead of the proper accent character. This is nonstandard but is especially common when typing capital letters: *E` or *E' instead ofÈ ('[he/she/it] is'). Other mistakes arise from the misunderstanding oftruncated andelided words: the phraseun po' ('a little'), which is the truncated version ofun poco, may be mistakenly spelled as *un pò. Italian has word pairs where one has an accent marked and the other not, with different pronunciation and meaning—such aspero ('pear tree') andperò ('but'), andpapa ('pope') andpapà ('dad'); the latter example is also valid forCatalan.
InBulgarian, the grave accent sometimes appears on the vowelsа,о,у,е,и, andъ to mark stress. It most commonly appears in books for children or foreigners, and dictionaries—or to distinguish between near-homophones:па̀ра (pàra 'steam, vapour') andпара̀ (parà, 'cent, penny, money'),въ̀лна (vằlna 'wool') andвълна̀ (vǎlnà 'wave'). While the stress is not marked most of the time a notable exception is the single-vowel wordи: without an accent it denotes the 'and' conjunction (рокля и пола = 'dress and skirt') while stressed shows the possessive pronoun 'her' (роклята ѝ = 'her dress'). Hence the rule to always mark the stress in this isolated case.[citation needed]
InMacedonian, the stress mark is orthographically required to distinguishhomographs (see§ Disambiguation) and is put mostly on the vowels е and и. Then, it forces the stress on the accented word-syllable instead of having a different syllable in the stress group getting accented. In turn, it changes the pronunciation and the whole meaning of the group.
Ukrainian,Rusyn,Belarusian, andRussian used a similar system until the first half of the 20th century. Now the main stress is preferably marked with an acute, and the role of the grave is limited to marking secondary stress in compound words (in dictionaries and linguistic literature).
InCroatian,Serbian, andSlovene, the stressed syllable can be short or long and have a rising or falling tone. They use (in dictionaries, orthography, and grammar books, for example) four different stress marks (grave, acute,double grave, and inverted breve) on the letters a, e, i, o, r, and u:à è ì ò r̀ ù. The system is identical in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Unicode forgot to encode R-grave when encoding the letters with stress marks.[citation needed]
In modernChurch Slavonic, there are three stress marks (acute, grave, and circumflex), which formerly represented different types of pitch accent. There is no longer any phonetic distinction between them, only an orthographical one. The grave is typically used when the stressed vowel is the last letter of a multiletter word.
InLigurian, the grave accent marks the accented short vowel of a word inà (sound[a]),è (sound[ɛ]),ì (sound[i]) andù (sound[y]). Forò, it indicates the short sound of[o], but may not be the stressed vowel of the word.[citation needed]
Although not its primary goal, the grave accent inPortuguese always marks an unstressed syllable in the words in which it is used, e.g. "àquilo" [aˈki.lu]. This contrasts with thecircumflex and theacute accent, which are always used on stressed vowels. For instance,ás (ace) is stressed ['as]~['aʃ], whereasàs (to the, feminine) is not [as]~ [aʃ]. Similarly, the colloquial contraction of "para o" (for the, masculine) may be spelledprò [pɾu] (unstressed) as opposed topró (pro, in favor of), which is stressed: ['pɾɔ].
The grave accent marks theheight or openness of the vowelse ando, indicating that they are pronouncedopen:è[ɛ] (as opposed toé[e]);ò[ɔ] (as opposed toó[o]), in severalRomance languages:
In several languages, the grave accent distinguishes bothhomophones and words that otherwise would behomographs:
InWelsh, the accent denotes ashort vowel sound in a word that would otherwise be pronounced with a long vowel sound:mẁg[mʊɡ] 'mug' versusmwg[muːɡ] 'smoke'.
InScottish Gaelic, it denotes a long vowel, such ascùis[kʰuːʃ] ('subject'), compared withcuir[kʰuɾʲ] ('put'). The use of acute accents to denote the rarer close long vowels, leaving the grave accents for the open long ones, is seen inolder texts, but it is no longer allowed according to thenew orthographic conventions.
In sometonal languages such asVietnamese, andMandarin Chinese (when it is written inHanyu Pinyin orZhuyin Fuhao), the grave accent indicates a fallingtone. The alternative to the grave accent in Mandarin is the numeral 4 after the syllable: pà = pa4.
InAfrican languages and inInternational Phonetic Alphabet, the grave accent often indicates a low tone:Nobiinjàkkàr ('fishhook'),Yorubaàgbọ̀n ('chin'),Hausamàcè ('woman').
The grave accent represents the low tone inKanien'kéha or Mohawk.[citation needed]
InEmilian, a grave accent placed overe oro denotes both length and openness;è andò represent[ɛː] and[ɔː].
InHawaiian, the grave accent is not placed over another character but is sometimes encountered as a typographically easier substitute for theʻokina:Hawai`i instead ofHawaiʻi.
InPhilippine languages, the grave accent (paiwà) is used to represent aglottal stop in the last vowel of the word with the stress occurring in the first or middle syllable such as inTagalogbatà[ˈbataʔ] ('child').
InPortuguese, the grave accent indicates the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words (crasis). For example, instead ofa aquela hora ('at that hour'), one says and writesàquela hora.
InRomagnol, a grave accent placed overe oro denotes both length and openness, representing[ɛ] and[ɔ].
The grave accent, though rare inEnglish words, sometimes appears in poetry and song lyrics to indicate that a usually silent vowel is pronounced to fit the rhythm or meter. Most often, it is applied to a word that ends with -ed. For instance, the wordlooked is usually pronounced/ˈlʊkt/ as a single syllable, with thee silent; when written aslookèd, thee is pronounced:/ˈlʊkɪd/look-ed). In this capacity, it can also distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like thepast tense of learn,learned/ˈlɜːrnd/, from theadjectivelearnèd/ˈlɜːrnɪd/ (for example, "a very learnèd man").
A grave accent can also occur in a foreign (usually French) term which has not beenanglicised: for example,vis-à-vis,pièce de résistance orcrème brûlée. It also may occur in an English name, often as an affectation, as for example in the case ofAlbert Ketèlbey.
Unicode encodes a number of cases of "letter with grave" asprecomposed characters and these are displayed below. In addition, many more symbols may be composed using thecombining character facility (U+0300 ◌̀COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT andU+0316 ◌̖COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT BELOW) that may be used with any letter or other diacritic to create a customised symbol but this does not mean that the result has any real-world application and thus are not shown in the table.
OnBritish and American keyboards, the grave accent is a key by itself. This is primarily used to actually type thestand-alone character, though some layouts (such asUS International orUK extended) may use it as adead key to modify the following letter. (With these layouts, to get a character such asà, the user can type` and then the vowel. For example, to makeà, the user can type` and thena.) In territories where the diacritic is used routinely, theprecomposed characters are provided as standard on national keyboards.
On a Mac, to get a character such asà, the user can type⌥ Option+` and then the vowel. For example, to makeà, the user can type⌥ Option+` and thena, and to makeÀ, the user can type⌥ Option+` and then⇧ Shift+a. IniOS and mostAndroid keyboards, combined characters with the grave accent are accessed by holding a finger on the vowel, which opens a menu for accents. For example, to makeà, the user can tap and holda and then tap or slide toà. Mac versions ofOS X Mountain Lion (10.8) or newer share similar functionality to iOS; by pressing and holding a vowel key to open an accent menu, the user may click on the grave accented character or type the corresponding number key displayed.
On a system running theX Window System, to get a character such asà, the user should pressCompose followed by`, then the vowel. Thecompose key on modern keyboards is usually mapped to a⊞ Win key or⇧ Shift+Alt Gr.[3]
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| Marks used as diacritics |
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