The acute accent was first used in thepolytonic orthography ofAncient Greek, where it indicated a syllable with a highpitch. In Modern Greek, astress accent has replaced the pitch accent, and the acute marks the stressed syllable of a word. The Greek name of the accented syllable was and isὀξεῖα (oxeîa, Modern Greekoxía) "sharp" or "high", which wascalqued (loan-translated) intoLatin asacūta "sharpened".
Blackfoot uses acute accents to show the place of stress in a word, for example,soyópokistsi (transl. "leaves").
Bulgarian: stress, which is variable in Bulgarian, is not usually indicated in Bulgarian except in dictionaries and sometimes in homonyms that are distinguished only by stress. However, Bulgarian usually uses thegrave accent to mark the vowel in a stressed syllable, unlike Russian and Ukrainian, which use the acute accent.
Dutch uses it to mark stress (vóórkomen –voorkómen, meaningoccur andprevent respectively) or a moreclosed vowel (hé –hè, equivalent to Englishhey andheh) if it is not clear from context. Sometimes, it is simply used for disambiguation, as inéén –een, meaning "one" and "a(n)".
Italian The accent is used to indicate the stress in a word, or whether the vowel is "open" or "wide", or "closed", or "narrow". For example,pèsca[ˈpɛska] "peach" ("open" or "wide" vowel, as in "pen") andpésca[ˈpeska] "fishing" ("closed" or "narrow" vowel, as in "pain"). However, in some regional accents, these words can be pronouned the same way, or even with opposite values.
Lakota. For example,kákhi "in that direction" butkakhí "take something to someone back there".
Leonese uses it for marking stress or disambiguation.
Modern Greek marks the stressed vowel of every polysyllabic word:ά (á),έ (é),ή (í),ί (í),ό (ó),ύ (ý),ώ (ó).
Norwegian,Swedish andDanish use the acute accent to indicate that a terminal syllable with thee is stressed and is often omitted if it does not change the meaning:armen (first syllable stressed) means "the arm" whilearmé(e)n means "the army";ide (first syllable stressed) means "bear's den" in Swedish,[3] whileidé means "idea". Also stress-related are the different spellings of the words en/én and et/ét (the indefinite article and the word "one" in Danish and Norwegian). In Norwegian, however, the neuter word "one" is spelled ett. Then, the acute points out that there is one and only one of the object, which derives from the obsolete spelling(s) een and eet. Some loanwords, mainly from French, are also written with the acute accent, such as Norwegian and Swedishkafé and Danishcafé (alsocafe).
Portuguese:á,é,í,ó,ú. It may also indicate height (see below).
Russian. Syllabic stress is irregular in Russian, and in reference and teaching materials (dictionaries and books for children or foreigners), stress is indicated by an acute accent above the stressed vowel, e.g.соба́ка (Russian pronunciation:[sɐˈbakə], dog), as follows:а́,е́,и́,о́,у́,ы́,э́,ю́,я́. The acute accent can be used both in the Cyrillic and sometimes in the romanised text.
Spanish marks stressed syllables in polysyllabic words that deviate from thestandardized stress patterns. In monosyllabic words, it is used to distinguish homophones, e.g.:el (the) andél (he).
Tagalog dictionaries including otherPhilippine languages use the acute accent to mark a vowel in a syllable with lexical stress(Diín) and avoid ambiguity. Combinations include á, í, ó, and ú while é is the rarest one. Since they are not part of the official alphabet, these vowels do not affect the order of each letter. Vowels with a stress at the first syllable are left unwritten and serves as the default word. For example,baka (cow) andbaká (maybe).
Ukrainian: sometimes added to mark syllabic stress, when it can help to distinguish betweenhomographs:за́мок'castle' vs.замо́к'lock', as follows:а́,е́,є́,и́,і́,о́,у́,ю́,я́. Commonly used in dictionaries, readers, and some children's books.
Welsh: word stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable, but one way of indicating stress on a final (short) vowel is by the use of the acute accent. In theWelsh orthography, it can be on any vowel:á,é,í,ó,ú,ẃ, orý. Examples:casáu[kaˈsaɨ,kaˈsai] "to hate",sigarét[sɪɡaˈrɛt] "cigarette",ymbarél[əmbaˈrɛl] "umbrella".
Bislama. One of the two orthographies distinguishesé[e] frome[ɛ].[4] The orthography after 1995 does not distinguish these sounds, and has no diacritics.
Catalan. The acute marks the quality of the vowelsé[e] (as opposed toè[ɛ]), andó[o] (as opposed toò[ɔ]).
French. The acute is used oné. It is known asaccent aigu, in contrast to theaccent grave which is the accent sloped the other way. It distinguishesé[e] fromè[ɛ],ê[ɛ], ande[ə]. Unlike in other Romance languages, the accent marks do not imply stress in French.
Italian. The acute accent (sometimes calledaccento chiuso, "closed accent" in Italian) is compulsory only in words of more than one syllable stressed on their final vowel (and a few other words). Words ending in stressed -o are never marked with an acute accent (ó), but with agrave accent (ò). Therefore, onlyé andè are normally contrasted, typically in words ending in-ché, such asperché ("why/because"); in the conjugatedcopulaè ("is"); in ambiguous monosyllables such asné ('neither')vs.ne ('of it') andsé ('itself')vs.se ('if'); and some verb forms,e.g.poté ("he/she/it could" (past tense)). The symboló can be used in the body of a word for disambiguation, for instance betweenbótte ("barrel") andbòtte ("beating"), though this is not mandatory: in fact standard Italian keyboards lack a dedicatedó key.
Occitan. The acute marks the quality of the vowelsé[e] (as opposed toè[ɛ]),ó[u] (as opposed toò[ɔ]) andá[ɔ/e] (as opposed toà[a]).
Scottish Gaelic (aCeltic rather than Romance language) uses/used a system in whiché[eː] is contrasted withè[ɛː] andó[oː] withò[ɔː]. Both the grave and acute indicate length;é/è andó/ò are thus contrasted withe[ɛ/e] ando[ɔ/o/ɤ] respectively. Besides,á appears in the wordsá[a],ám[ãũm] andás[as] in order to distinguish them froma[ə],am[əm] andas[əs] respectively.[5][6] The other vowels (i andu) only appear either without an accent or with a grave. Since the 1980s theSQA (which sets school standards and thus thede facto standard language) and most publishers have abandoned the acute accent, usinggrave accents in all situations (analogous tothe use of the acute in Irish). However, universities, some publishers and many speakers continue to use acute accents.
To mark low vowels:
Portuguese. The vowelsá/a/,é/ɛ/ andó/ɔ/ are stressed low vowels, in opposition toâ/ɐ/,ê/e/ andô/o/ which are stressed high vowels. However, the accent is only used in words whose stressed syllable is in an unpredictable location within the word: where the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, no accent is used, and the height of the stressed vowel cannot then usually be determined solely from the word's spelling.
Arabic andPersian:⟨á, í, ú⟩ were used in westerntransliteration of Islamic language texts from the 18th to early 20th centuries. Representing the long vowels, they are typically transcribed with amacron today except inBahá'í orthography.
Czech:⟨á, é, í, ó, ú, ý⟩ are the long versions of⟨a, e, i, o, u, y⟩. The accent is known asčárka. To indicate a long⟨u⟩ in the middle or at the end of a word, akroužek ("ring") is used instead, to form⟨ů⟩.
Hungarian:⟨í, ó, ú⟩ are the long equivalents of the vowels⟨i, o, u⟩.⟨ő, ű⟩ (seedouble acute accent) are the long equivalents of⟨ö, ü⟩. Both types of accents are known ashosszú ékezet (hosszú means long). The letters⟨á⟩ and⟨é⟩ are two long vowels but they are also distinct in quality, rather than being the long equivalents of⟨a⟩ and⟨e⟩ (see below inLetter extension).
Irish:⟨á, é, í, ó, ú⟩ are the long equivalents of the vowels⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩, the accent affects pronunciation and meaning, e.g.Seán ("John") butsean ("old").[7] The accent is known as a(síneadh) fada[ˌʃiːnʲəˈfˠad̪ˠə] ("long (sign)"), which is also used inHiberno-English.
Old Norse:⟨á, é, í, ó, ú, ý⟩ are the long versions of⟨a, e, i, o, u, y⟩. Sometimes,⟨ǿ⟩ is used as the long version of⟨ø⟩, but⟨œ⟩ is used more often. Sometimes, the short-livedOld Icelandic long⟨ǫ⟩ (also written⟨ö⟩) is written using an acute-accented form,⟨ǫ́⟩, or a version with a macron,⟨ǭ⟩, but usually it is not distinguished from⟨á⟩ from which it is derived byu-mutation.
Slovak: the acute accent is calleddĺžeň in Slovak. In addition to the long vowels⟨á, é, í, ó, ú, ý⟩, dĺžeň is used to marksyllabic consonants⟨ŕ, ĺ⟩, which are the long counterparts of syllabic⟨r, l⟩.
A graphically similar, but not identical, mark is indicative of apalatalized sound in several languages.
InPolish, such a mark is known as akreska ("stroke") and is an integral part of several letters: four consonants and one vowel. When appearing in consonants, it indicatespalatalization, similar to the use of theháček inCzech and other Slavic languages (e.g.sześć[ˈʂɛɕt͡ɕ] "six"). However, in contrast to theháček which is usually used forpostalveolar consonants, thekreska denotesalveolo-palatal consonants. In traditional Polishtypography, thekreska is more nearly vertical than the acute accent, and placed slightly right of center.[8] A similar rule applies to the Belarusian Latin alphabetŁacinka. However, for computer use,Unicode conflates thecodepoints for these letters with those of the accented Latin letters of similar appearance.
Sorbian uses the acute for palatalization as in Polish:⟨ć dź ń⟩. Lower Sorbian also uses⟨ŕ ś ź⟩, and Lower Sorbian previously used⟨ḿ ṕ ẃ⟩ and⟨b́ f́⟩, also written as⟨b' f'⟩; these are now spelt as⟨mj pj wj⟩ and⟨bj fj⟩.
In theQuốc Ngữ system forVietnamese, the Yale romanization forCantonese, thePinyinromanization forMandarin Chinese, and theBopomofosemi-syllabary, the acute accent indicates a risingtone. In Mandarin, the alternative to the acute accent is the number 2 after the syllable: lái = lai2. InCantonese Yale, the acute accent is either tone 2, or tone 5 if the vowel(s) are followed by 'h' (if the number form is used, 'h' is omitted): má = ma2, máh = ma5.
The acute accent is used in Serbo-Croatian dictionaries and linguistic publications to indicate a high-rising accent. It is not used in everyday writing.
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 finale and might be mistaken for plurals of a noun (which most often end in-er):analysér is the imperative form ofat analysere "to analyse",analyser is "analyses", plural of the nounanalyse "analysis". Using an acute accent is always optional, never required.
Dutch. Examples:één "one" vs.een "a/an";vóór "before" vs.voor "for";vóórkomen "to exist/to happen" vs.voorkómen "to prevent/to avoid". Using an acute accent is mostly optional.
Modern Greek. Although all polysyllabic words have an acute accent on the stressed syllable, in monosyllabic words the presence or absence of an accent may disambiguate. The most common case isη, the feminine definite article ("the"), versusή, meaning "or". Other cases includeπου ("who"/"which") versusπού ("where") andπως ("that", as in "he told methat...") versusπώς ("how").
Norwegian. It is used to indicate stress on a vowel otherwise not expected to have stress. Most words are stressed on the first syllable and diacritical marks are rarely used. Although incorrect, it is frequently used to mark the imperative form of verbs ending in-ere as it is in Danish:kontrollér is the imperative form of "to control",kontroller is the noun "controls". The simple past of the verbå fare, "to travel", can optionally be writtenfór, to distinguish it fromfor (preposition "for" as in English),fôr "feed"n./"lining", orfòr (only inNynorsk) "narrow ditch, trail by plow" (all the diacritics in these examples are optional.[9])
Russian. Acute accents (technically,stress marks) are used in dictionaries to indicate the stressed syllable. They may also be optionally used to disambiguate both betweenminimal pairs, such as за́мок (read as zámak, means "castle") and замо́к (read as zamók, means "lock"), and betweenquestion words andrelative pronouns such as что ("what", stressed, or "that", unstressed), similarly to Spanish. This is rare, however, as usually meaning is determined by context and no stress mark is written. The same rules apply toUkrainian,Rusyn,Belarusian andBulgarian.
Spanish. Covers various question word / relative pronoun pairs where the first is stressed and the second is aclitic, such ascómo (interrogative "how") andcomo (non-interrogative "how", comparative "like", "I eat"[10]), differentiatesqué (what) fromque (that), and some other words such astú "you" andtu "your,"té "tea" andte "you" (direct/indirect object),él "he/him" andel ("the", masculine). This usage of the acute accent is calledtilde diacrítica.
InDanish, the acute accent can also be used foremphasis, especially on the wordder (there), as inDer kan ikke være mange mennesker dér, meaning "There can't be many peoplethere" orDér skal vi hen meaning "That's where we're going".
InDutch, the acute accent can also be used to emphasize an individual word within a sentence. For example,Dit is ónze auto, niet die van jullie, "This isour car, not yours." In this example,ónze is merely an emphasized form ofonze. Also in family names like Piét, Piél, Plusjé, Hofsté. TheIJ digraph can be stressed with íj́ but is usually stressed as íj for technical reasons.
In theArmenian script emphasis on a word is marked by an acute accent above the word's stressed vowel; it is traditionally grouped with the Armenian question and exclamation marks which are also diacritics applied to the stressed vowel.
InFaroese, the acute accent is used on five 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.
Despite this difference, in most of the cases, these two pairs are arranged as equal incollation, just like the other pairs (see above) that only differ in length.
InIcelandic the acute accent is used on all 6 of the vowels (a, e, i, o, u and y), and, like in Faroese, these are considered separate letters.A sample extract ofIcelandic.
á:[au(ː)]
é: long[jeɛː], short[jɛ]
í/ý:[i(ː)]
ó:[ou(ː)]
ú:[u(ː)]
All can be either short or long, but the pronunciation ofé is not the same short and long.
Etymologically, vowels with an acute accent in these languages correspond to theirOld Norse counterparts, which were long vowels but in many cases have becomediphthongs. The only exception is é, which in Faroese has becomeæ.
InKashubian,Polish, andSorbian, the acute on "ó", historically used to indicate a lengthening of "o"[ɔ], now indicateshigher pronunciation,[o] and[u], respectively.
In someBasque texts predatingStandard Basque, the letters⟨r⟩ and⟨l⟩ carry acute accents (an invention bySabino Arana[11]), which are otherwise indicated by double letters. In such cases,⟨ŕ⟩ is used to represent⟨rr⟩ (a trilled⟨r⟩, this spelling is used even at the end of a syllable,[12] to differentiate from -⟨r⟩-, an alveolar tap – in Basque/r/ in word-final positions is always trilled) and⟨ĺ⟩ for⟨ll⟩ (a palatalized/l/).
In transliterating texts written inCuneiform, an acute accent over the vowel indicates that the original sign is the second representing that value in the canonical lists. Thussu is used to transliterate the first sign with the phonetic value/su/, whilesú transliterates the second sign with the value/su/.[clarification needed]
InEmilian,é ó denote both length and height, representing [e, o].
InIndonesian dictionaries,⟨é⟩ is used to represent/e/, while⟨e⟩ is used to represent/ə/.
InNorthern Sámi, an acute accent was placed over the correspondingLatin letter to represent the letters peculiar to this language (Áá, Čč, Đđ, Ŋŋ, Šš, Ŧŧ, Žž) when typing when there was no way of entering these letters correctly otherwise.[13]
ManyNorwegian words of French origin retain an acute accent, such asallé,kafé,idé,komité. Popular usage can be sketchy and often neglects the accent, or results in the grave accent erroneously being used in its place. Likewise, inSwedish, 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 includecafé ("café") andresumé ("résumé", noun). There are two pairs ofhomographs that are differentiated only by the accent:armé ("army") versusarme ("poor; pitiful", masculine gender) andidé ("idea") versuside ("winter quarters").
⟨Ǵǵ⟩ and⟨Źź⟩ are used inPashto in the Latin alphabet, equivalent toږ andځ, respectively.
InRomagnol,é ó denote both length and height, representing [eː, oː].
As with other diacritical marks, a number of (usuallyFrench)loanwords are sometimes spelled in English with an acute accent as used in the original language: these includeattaché,blasé,canapé,cliché,communiqué,café,décor,déjà vu,détente,élite,entrée,exposé,mêlée,fiancé,fiancée,papier-mâché,passé,pâté,piqué,plié,repoussé,résumé,risqué,sauté,roué,séance,naïveté andtouché. Retention of the accent is common only in the French endingé orée, as in these examples, where its absence would tend to suggest a different pronunciation. Thus the French wordrésumé is commonly seen in English asresumé, with only one accent (but also with both or none).
Acute accents are sometimes added to loanwords where a finale is notsilent, for example,maté from Spanishmate, the Maldivian capitalMalé,saké from Japanesesake, andPokémon from the Japanese compound forpocket monster, the last three from languages which do not use the Roman alphabet, and where transcriptions do not normally use acute accents.
The acute accent is sometimes (though rarely) used for poetic purposes:
It can mark stress on an unusual syllable: for example,caléndar to indicate[kəˈlɛn.dɚ] (rather than the standard[ˈkæl.ən.dɚ]).
It can disambiguate stress where the distinction is metrically important: for example,rébel (as opposed torebél), oráll trádes, to show that the phrase is pronounced as aspondee, rather than the more naturaliamb.
It can indicate the sounding of an ordinarily silent letter: for example,pickéd to indicate the pronunciation[ˈpɪkɪd], rather than standard[pɪkt] (thegrave accent is more common for this last purpose).
The layout of some European PC keyboards, combined with problematic keyboard-driver semantics, causes some users to use an acute accent or a grave accent instead of an apostrophe when typing in English (e.g. typing John´s or John`s instead of John's).[14]
Acute accent in multiplecomputer fonts. Gray letters indicateo kreska in the provided font. Notice thatkreska in gray letters are steeper than acute accent in black letters. Also in Adobe HeiTi Std and SimSun, the stroke goes from bottom-left (thicker) to top-right (thinner), showing the rising nature of the tone; however, the acute accent in SimHei is made without variation in thickness.
Western typographic and calligraphic traditions generally design the acute accent as going from top to bottom. French even has the definition of acute is the accent«qui va de droite à gauche» (English:"which goes from right to left"),[15] meaning that it descends from top right to lower left.
In Polish, thekreska diacritic is used instead, which usually has a different shape and style compared to other European languages. It features a more vertical steep form and is moved more to the right side of center line than acute. As Unicode does not differentiate thekreska from acute, letters from Western (computer) fonts and Polish fonts had to share the same set ofcode points, which make designing the conflicting character (i.e.o acute,⟨ó⟩) more troublesome.OpenType tried to solve this problem by giving language-sensitive glyph substitution to designers such that the font would automatically switch between Western⟨ó⟩ and Polish⟨ó⟩ based on language settings.[8] New computer fonts are sensitive to this issue and their design for the diacritics tends toward a more "universal design" so that there will be less need for localization, for exampleRoboto andNoto typefaces.[16]
Pinyin uses the acute accent to mark the second tone (rising or high-rising tone), which indicates a tone rising from low to high, causing the writing stroke of acute accent to go from lower left to top right. This contradicts the Western typographic tradition which makes designing the acute accent in Chinese typefaces a problem. Designers approach this problem in 3 ways: either keep the original Western form of going top right (thicker) to bottom left (thinner) (e.g.Arial/Times New Roman), flip the stroke to go from bottom left (thicker) to top right (thinner) (e.g. Adobe HeiTi Std/SimSun), or just make the accents without stroke variation (e.g.SimHei).[17]
Unicode encodes a number of cases of "letter with acute accent" asprecomposed characters and these are displayed below. In addition, many more symbols may be composed using thecombining character facility (U+0301◌́COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT andU+0317◌̗COMBINING ACUTE 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 are not shown in the table.
Computer keyboards sold in many countries have anAltGr ('alternate graphic') key (orOption key) which adds a third and (with theShift key) fourth effect to most keys. ThusAltGr+a producesá andAltGr+A producesÁ. (Most languages requirediacritics ('accents') and thus an 'extended' or nationalkeyboard mapping is required. Where US standard keyboards are supplied, typically it is controlled by a localised keyboard mapping so that the right-Alt key behaves as an AltGr key.)
Because keyboards have only a limited number of keys, US standard keyboards do not have keys for accented characters. An alternative method is the 'dead key', a key that modifies the meaning of the next key press. This method was used withtypewriters where, when the typist typed an accent, thecarriage did not move as usual with the effect that the next letter would be written on the same place on the paper. An appropriate keyboard mapping (such asUS-International) provides this function via the right-handAlt key. ThusRightAlt+' (apostrophe) is a dead key so appears to have no effect until the next key is pressed, when it adds the desired acute accent.
^Nadeau, Jean-Benoît; Barlow, Julie (2006).The Story of French. Alfred A. Knopf Canada. pp. 54–55.ISBN978-0-676-97734-9.Tory promoted the 'accent aigu', as in é (first used in 1530)
^Lecciones de ortografía del euskera bizkaino,page 40, Arana eta Goiri'tar Sabin, Bilbao, Bizkaya'ren Edestija ta Izkerea Pizkundia, 1896 (Sebastián de Amorrortu).
^Svonni, E Mikael (1984).Sámegiel-ruoŧagiel skuvlasátnelistu. Sámiskuvlastivra. III.ISBN91-7716-008-8.
The dictionary definition ofacute accent at Wiktionary
