á

Á, á ( a- acute) is a letter of the Chinese (Pinyin), Blackfoot, Czech, Dobrujan Tatar, Dutch, Faroese, Filipino, Galician, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Karakalpak, Lakota, Navajo, Occitan, Portuguese, Sámi, Slovak, Spanish, Vietnamese, Welsh and Western Apache languages as a variant of the letter a. It is sometimes confused with à; e.g. "5 pommes á €1", which is supposed to be written as "5 pommes à €1" (meaning "5 apples at 1 euro each" in French).

Usage in various languages

Chinese

In Chinese pinyin á is the ''yángpíng'' tone ( 陽平/ 阳平 "high-rising tone") of "a".

Czech

Á is the 2nd letter of the Czech language and represents the sound .

Dobrujan Tatar

Á is the 2nd letter of the Dobrujan Tatar alphabet, represents the near-low unrounded ATR or soft vowel /æ/ as in "sáát" ̶ææt̶'hour', 'clock'.

Dutch

In Dutch, the Á is used to put emphasis on an "a", either in a long "a" form like in ''háár'' ("hair"), or in a short form like in ''kán'' (the verb "can").

Faroese

Á is the 2nd letter of the Faroese alphabet and represents or .

Filipino

In Filipino, á is an accented letter and has no direct equivalent other than a. An example is the first "a" as in "baka" ("cow") and "tatawid" ("to cross").

Hungarian

In Hungarian, Á is the second letter of Hungarian representing .

Icelandic

Á is the second letter of the Icelandic alphabet and represents (as in "ow").

Irish

In Irish, á is called ''a fada'' ("long a"), pronounced and appears in words such as ''slán'' ("goodbye"). It is the only diacritic used in Modern Irish, since the decline of the dot above many letters in the Irish language. Fada is only used on vowel letters i.e. á, é, í, ó, ú. It symbolises a lengthening of the vowel.

Karakalpak

Á is defined as the second letter and represents .

Kazakh

In the 2018 amends of Kazakh alphabet list, Á is defined as the second letter and represents . It has been replaced by Ä ä in the 2019 amends, and matches Cyrillic alphabet Ә, 2017 version Aʼ and Arabic ٵ.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, á is used to mark a stressed in words whose stressed syllable is in an abnormal location within the word, as in ''lá'' (there) and ''rápido'' (rapid, fast). If the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, the acute accent is not used. Á contrasts with â, pronounced .

Scottish Gaelic

Á was once used in Scottish Gaelic, but has now been largely superseded by à. It can still be seen in certain writings, but it is no longer used in standard orthography.

Slovak

Á is the 2nd letter in the Slovak alphabet and it represents .

Spanish

In Spanish, á is an accented letter. There is no alphabetical or phonological difference between a and á; both sound like /a/, both are considered the same letter, and both have the same value in the Spanish alphabetical order. The accent indicates the stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to "break up" a diphthong or to avoid what would otherwise be homonyms, although this does not happen with á, because a is a strong vowel and usually does not become a semivowel in a diphthong. See Diacritic and Acute accent for more details.

Vietnamese

In the Vietnamese alphabet, á is the ''sắc'' tone (high-rising tone) of a. "Á", as a shorthand for "châu Á", is also the Vietnamese word for "Asia".

Welsh

In Welsh, word stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable, but one way of indicating stress on a final (short) vowel is through the use of the acute accent. The acute accent on ''a'' is often found in verbal nouns and borrowed words, for example, ''casáu'' "to hate", ''caniatáu'' "to allow", ''carafán'' "caravan".

Character mappings

See also

* Acute accent
* À

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:A
A-acute
Polish letters with diacritics