Acute accent

The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed characters are available.

Uses

History

An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.

Pitch

Ancient Greek

The acute accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it indicated a syllable with a high pitch. In Modern Greek, a stress 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 is (''oxeîa'', Modern Greek ''oxía'') "sharp" or "high", which was calqued (loan-translated) into Latin as "sharpened".

Stress

The acute accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in several languages:
* Blackfoot uses acute accents to show the place of stress in a word: soyópokistsi "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 the grave accent to mark the vowel in a stressed syllable, unlike Russian, which uses the acute accent.
* Catalan uses it in stressed vowels: ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú''.
*Dutch uses it to mark stress (''vóórkomen'' – ''voorkómen'', meaning ''occur'' and ''prevent'' respectively) or a more closed vowel (''hé'' – ''hè'', equivalent to English ''hey'' and ''heh'') if it is not clear from context. Sometimes, it is simply used for disambiguation, as in ''één'' – ''een'', meaning "one" and "a(n)".
* Galician
* Hopi has acute to mark a higher tone.
*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'' "peach" ("open" or "wide" vowel, as in "pen") and ''pésca'' "fishing" ("closed" or "narrow" vowel, as in "pain"). However, these two words are usually pronounced the same way, which varies with region.
*Lakota. For example, ''kákhi'' "in that direction" but ''kakhí'' "take something to someone back there".
* Leonese uses it for marking stress or disambiguation.
*Modern Greek marks the stressed vowel of every polysyllabic word: (''á''), (''é''), (''í''), (''í''), (''ó''), (''í''), (''ó'').
* Navajo where the acute marks a higher tone.
*Norwegian, Swedish and Danish use the acute accent to indicate that a terminal syllable with the ''e'' is stressed and is often omitted if it does not change the meaning: ''armen'' (first syllable stressed) means "the arm" while ''armé(e)n'' means "the army"; ''ide'' (first syllable stressed) means "bear's den" while ''idé'' 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 Swedish ''kafé'' and Danish ''café'' (also ''cafe'').
*Occitan
*Portuguese: ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú''. It may also indicate height (see below).
*Russian. 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. 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 the standardized stress patterns. In monosyllabic words, it is used to distinguish homophones, e.g.: ''el'' (the) and ''él'' (he).
* Ukrainian: marks the stress, but in regular typography is only used when it can help to distinguish between homographs: (castle) vs. (lock). Commonly used in dictionaries and some children 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 the Welsh orthography, it can be on any vowel: ''á'', ''é'', ''í'', ''ó'', ''ú'', ''ẃ'', or ''ý''. Examples: "to hate", "cigarette", "umbrella".

Height

The acute accent marks the height of some stressed vowels in various Romance languages.
*To mark high vowels:
**Bislama. The acute is used only on ''é'', but only in one of the two orthographies. It distinguishes ''é'' from ''e'' . The orthography after 1995 (which has no diacritics), does not distinguish these sounds.
** Catalan. The acute marks the quality of the vowels ''é'' (as opposed to ''è'' ), and ''ó'' (as opposed to ''ò'' ).
** French. The acute is used on ''é''. It is known as ''accent aigu'', in contrast to the '' accent grave'' which is the accent sloped the other way. It distinguishes ''é'' from ''è'' , ''ê'' , and ''e'' . Unlike in other Romance languages, the accent marks do not imply stress in French.
**Italian. The acute accent (sometimes called ''accento 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 a grave accent (''ò''). Therefore, only ''é'' and ''è'' are normally contrasted, typically in words ending in ''-ché'', such as ''perché'' ("why/because"); in the conjugated copula ''è'' ("is"); in ambiguous monosyllables such as ''né'' ('neither') ''vs.'' ''ne'' ('of it') and ''sé'' ('itself') ''vs.'' ''se'' ('if'); and some verb forms, ''e.g.'' ''poté'' ("he/she/it could" (past tense)). The symbol ''ó'' can be used in the body of a word for disambiguation, for instance between ''bótte'' ("barrel") and ''bòtte'' ("beating"), though this is not mandatory: in fact standard Italian keyboards lack a dedicated ''ó'' key.
**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'' ).
**Scottish Gaelic (a Celtic rather than Romance language) uses/used a system in which ''é'' is contrasted with ''è'' and ''ó'' with ''ò'' . Both the grave and acute indicate length; ''é''/''è'' and ''ó''/''ò'' are thus contrasted with ''e'' and ''o'' respectively. Besides, ''á'' appears in the words ''á'' , ''ám'' and ''ás'' in order to distinguish them from ''a'' , ''am'' and ''as'' respectively. The other vowels (''i'' and ''u'') only appear either without an accent or with a grave. Since the 1980s the SQA (which sets school standards and thus the ''de facto'' standard language) and most publishers have abandoned the acute accent, using grave accents in all situations (analogous to the use of the acute in Irish). However, universities, some publishers and many speakers continue to use acute accents.
*To mark low vowels:
**Portuguese. The vowels ''á'' , ''é'' and ''ó'' are stressed low vowels, in opposition to ''â'' , ''ê'' and ''ô'' 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.

Length

Long vowels

*Arabic and Persian: were used in western transliteration of Islamic language texts from the 18th to early 20th centuries. Representing the long vowels, they are typically transcribed with a macron today except in Bahá'í orthography.
*Classical Latin: sometimes used to represent the apex in modern orthography.
*Czech: are the long versions of . The accent is known as . To indicate a long in the middle or at the end of a word, a ("ring") is used instead, to form .
* Hungarian: are the long equivalents of the vowels . (see double acute accent) are the long equivalents of . Both types of accents are known as ( means long). The letters and are two long vowels but they are also distinct in quality, rather than being the long equivalents of and (see below in Letter extension).
*Irish: are the long equivalents of the vowels , the accent affects pronunciation and meaning, e.g. ("John") but ("old"). The accent is known as a ("long (sign)"), which is also used in Hiberno-English.
*Old Norse: are the long versions of . Sometimes, is used as the long version of , but is used more often. Sometimes, the short-lived Old Icelandic long (also written ) is written using an acute-accented form, , or a version with a macron, , but usually it is not distinguished from from which it is derived by u-mutation.
* Slovak: the acute accent is called in Slovak. In addition to the long vowels , dĺžeň is used to mark syllabic consonants , which are the long counterparts of syllabic .

Short vowels

* Ligurian: in the official orthography, ''é'' is used for short , and ''ó'' is used for short .

Palatalization

A graphically similar, but not identical, mark is indicative of a palatalized sound in several languages.

In Polish, such a mark is known as a ( en, stroke) and is an integral part of several letters: four consonants and one vowel. When appearing in consonants, it indicates palatalization, similar to the use of the in Czech and other Slavic languages (e.g. "six"). However, in contrast to the which is usually used for postalveolar consonants, the denotes alveolo-palatal consonants. In traditional Polish typography, the is more nearly vertical than the acute accent, and placed slightly right of center. A similar rule applies to the Belarusian Latin alphabet . However, for computer use, Unicode conflates the codepoints for these letters with those of the accented Latin letters of similar appearance.

In Serbo-Croatian, as in Polish, the letter is used to represent a voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate .

In the romanization of Macedonian, and represent the Cyrillic letters (Gje) and (Kje), which stand for palatal or alveolo-palatal consonants, though and (or and ) are more commonly used for this purpose. The same two letters are used to transcribe the postulated Proto-Indo-European phonemes and .

Sorbian uses the acute for palatalization as in Polish: . Lower Sorbian also uses , and Lower Sorbian previously used and , also written as ; these are now spelt as and .

Tone

In the Quốc Ngữ system for Vietnamese, the Yale romanization for Cantonese, the Pinyin romanization for Mandarin Chinese, and the Bopomofo semi-syllabary, the acute accent indicates a rising tone. In Mandarin, the alternative to the acute accent is the number 2 after the syllable: lái = lai2. In Cantonese 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.

In African languages and Athabaskan languages, it frequently marks a high tone, e.g., Yoruba ''apá'' 'arm', Nobiin ''féntí'' 'sweet date', Ekoti ''kaláwa'' 'boat', Navajo ''t’áá'' 'just'.

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.

Disambiguation

The acute accent is used to disambiguate certain words which would otherwise be homographs in the following languages:

* Catalan. Examples: ''són'' "they are" vs. ''son'' "tiredness", ''més'' "more" vs. ''mes'' "month".
*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". 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 is , the feminine definite article ("the"), versus , meaning "or". Other cases include ("who"/"which") versus ("where") and ("that", as in "he told me ''that''...") versus ("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 verb ''å fare'', "to travel", can optionally be written ''fór'', to distinguish it from ''for'' (preposition "for" as in English), ''fôr'' "feed" ''n.''/"lining", or ''fòr'' (only in Nynorsk) "narrow ditch, trail by plow" (all the diacritics in these examples are optional.)
*Portuguese. Examples: ''avô'' "grandfather" vs. ''avó'' "grandmother", ''nós'' "subject pronoun ''we''" vs. ''nos'' "oblique case".
*Russian. Acute accents (technically, stress marks) are used in dictionaries to indicate the stressed syllable. They may also be optionally used to disambiguate both between minimal pairs, such as за́мок (read as zámak, means "castle") and замо́к (read as zamók, means "lock"), and between question words and relative 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 to Ukrainian, Rusyn, Belarusian and Bulgarian.
*Spanish. Covers various question word / relative pronoun pairs where the first is stressed and the second is a clitic, such as ''cómo'' (interrogative "how") and ''como'' (non-interrogative "how", comparative "like", "I eat"), differentiates ''qué'' (what) from ''que'' (that), and some other words such as ''tú'' "you" and ''tu'' "your," ''té'' "tea" and ''te'' "you" (direct/indirect object), ''él'' "he/him" and ''el'' ("the", masculine). This usage of the acute accent is called ''tilde diacrítica''.

Emphasis

*In Danish, the acute accent can also be used for emphasis, especially on the word ''der'' (there), as in ''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".
* In Dutch, 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 is ''our'' car, not yours." In this example, ''ónze'' is merely an emphasized form of ''onze''. Also in family names like Piét, Piél, Plusjé, Hofsté.
* In the Armenian 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.

Letter extension

*In Faroese, 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.
*: 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 Hungarian, the acute accent marks a difference in quality on two vowels, apart from vowel length:
*:The (short) vowel ''a'' is open back rounded (ɒ), but ''á'' is open front unrounded (a) (and long).
*:Similarly, the (short) vowel ''e'' is open-mid front unrounded (ɛ), while (long) ''é'' is close-mid front unrounded (e).
*:Despite this difference, in most of the cases, these two pairs are arranged as equal in collation, just like the other pairs (see above) that only differ in length.
*In Icelandic 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.
*: 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 Kashubian, Polish, and Sorbian, the acute on "ó", historically used to indicate a lengthening of "o" , now indicates higher pronunciation, and , respectively.
*In Turkmen, the letter ''ý'' is a consonant: .

Other uses

*In some Basque texts predating Standard Basque, the letters and carry acute accents (an invention by Sabino Arana Trask, L. ''The History of Basque'' Routledge: 1997 ), which are otherwise indicated by double letters. In such cases, is used to represent (a trilled , this spelling is used even at the end of a syllable,''Lecciones de ortografía del euskera bizkaino''
page 40
Arana eta Goiri'tar Sabin, Bilbao, Bizkaya'ren Edestija ta Izkerea Pizkundia, 1896 (Sebastián de Amorrortu). to differentiate from --, an alveolar tap in Basque in word-final positions is always trilled) and for (a palatalized ).
*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 , while ''sú'' transliterates the second sign with the value .
*In Emilian-Romagnol, ''é ó'' denote both length and height. In Romagnol they represent ː, oː while in Emilian they represent , o
*In Indonesian dictionaries, is used to represent , while is used to represent .
*In Northern Sámi, an acute accent was placed over the corresponding Latin 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.
*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, or results in the grave accent erroneously being used in its place. Likewise, in Swedish, the acute accent is used only for the letter , 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'' ("résumé", 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").
* and are used in Pashto in the Latin alphabet, equivalent to and , respectively.

English

As with other diacritical marks, a number of (usually French) loanwords are sometimes spelled in English with an acute accent as used in the original language: these include ''attaché'', ''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'', ''toupée'' and ''touché''. 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 ', with only one accent (but also with both or none).

Acute accents are sometimes added to loanwords where a final ''e'' is not silent, for example, '' maté'' from Spanish ''mate,'' the Maldivian capital ''Malé,'' ''saké'' from Japanese ''sake'', and '' Pokémon'' from the Japanese compound for ''pocket monster,'' the last three from languages which do not use the Roman alphabet, and where transcriptions do not normally use acute accents.

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, ''coup d'état'', ''pièce de résistance