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-as of [3 JANUARY 2024]–
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-SPECIAL CHARACTERS-
(KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS)
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*TYPES* –>
#1
‘GRAVE ACCENT’
À
(hold down letter and press ‘1’ when menu appears)
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#2
‘ACUTE ACCENT’
Á
(hold down letter and press ‘2’ when menu appears)
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#3
‘CIRCUMFLEX‘
Â
(hold down letter and press ‘3’ when menu appears)
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#4
“DIAERESIS”
(or ‘umlaut’)
Ä
(hold down ‘letter key’ and press ‘4’ when menu appears)
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#5
“ASH”
Æ
(hold down ‘letter key’ and press ‘5’ when menu appears)
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#6
Ã
(hold down ‘letter key’ and press ‘6’ when menu appears)
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#7
“RING”
Å
(hold down ‘letter key’ and press ‘7’ when menu appears)
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#8
Ā
(hold down ‘letter key’ and press ‘8’ when menu appears)
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Ă
*BREVE*
(pronounced ‘breeve’)
(type ‘option B’ and then press letter)
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…
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*horizontal ellipsis* —>
…
[OPTION] + [ ; ]
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*aka* –>
‘diacritical mark‘
‘diacritical point‘
‘diacritical sign‘
‘accent‘
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-a diacritic is a ‘glyph’ added to a [‘letter’ / ‘basic glyph’]-
.
(the term derives from the ancient greek διακριτικός (diakritikós / ‘distinguishing”) from διακρίνω (diakrī́nō, “to distinguish”))
(diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective)
(some diacritical marks, such as the acute ( ´ ) and grave ( ` ), are often called accents)
(‘diacritical marks’ may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between 2 letters)
(the main use of diacritical marks in the Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added)
(examples are the diaereses in the borrowed French words naïve and Noël, which show that the vowel with the diaeresis mark is pronounced separately from the preceding vowel
the acute and grave accents, which can indicate that a final vowel is to be pronounced, as in saké and poetic breathèd;
and the cedilla under the “c” in the borrowed French word façade, which shows it is pronounced /s/ rather than /k/.
In other Latin-script alphabets, they may distinguish between homonyms, such as the French là(“there”) versus la (“the”) that are both pronounced /la/.
In Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question.
In other alphabetic systems, diacritical marks may perform other functions.
Vowel pointing systems, namely the Arabic harakat ( ـِ ,ـُ ,ـَ, etc.) and the Hebrewniqqud ( ַ◌, ֶ◌, ִ◌, ֹ◌, ֻ◌, etc.) systems, indicate vowels that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet.
The Indic virama ( ् etc.) and the Arabic sukūn ( ـْـ ) mark the absence of vowels.
Cantillation marks indicate prosody.
Other uses include the Early Cyrillic titlo stroke ( ◌҃ ) and the Hebrew gershayim ( ״ ), which, respectively, mark abbreviations or acronyms, and Greek diacritical marks, which showed that letters of the alphabet were being used as numerals.
In the Hanyu Pinyin official romanization system for Chinese, diacritics are used to mark the tones of the syllables in which the marked vowels occur.
In orthography and collation, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new, distinct letter or as a letter–diacritic combination.
(this varies from language to language, and may vary from case to case within a language)
(‘english’ is the only major modern european language requiring no diacritics for native words (although a diaeresis may be used in words such as “coöperation”))
.
(in some cases, letters are used as “in-line diacritics”, with the same function as ancillary glyphs, in that they modify the sound of the letter preceding them, as in the case of the “h” in the English pronunciation of “sh” + “th”)
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“ACCENTS”
‘acute accent’
(down –> up)
‘grave accent’
(up –> down)
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.
breve˘
inverted breve ̑
‘cedilla’
diaeresis, umlaut¨
dot·
palatal hook ̡
retroflex hook ̢
hook above, dấu hỏi ̉
horn ̛
iota subscript ͅ
macronˉ
ogonek, nosinė˛
perispomene ͂
overring˚
underring˳
rough breathing῾
smooth breathing᾿
Marks sometimes used as diacritics
apostrophe’
bar◌̸
colon:
comma,
full stop/period.
hyphen˗
prime′
tilde~
Diacritical marks in other scripts
Arabic diacritics
Early Cyrillic diacritics
kamora ҄
pokrytie ҇
titlo ҃
Gurmukhī diacritics
Hebrew diacritics
Indic diacritics
anusvaraं ং ം
chandrabinduँ ఁ
nukta़
virama् ് ్ ් ್
visargaः ঃ
IPA diacritics
Japanese diacritics
dakuten ﾞ
handakuten ﾟ
Khmer diacritics
Syriac diacritics
Thai diacritics
Related
Dotted circle◌
Punctuation marks
Logic symbols
This template:
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talk
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 â
Ấ ấ
Ầ ầ
Ẩ ẩ
Ā̂ ā̂
Ẫ ẫ
Ậ ậ
B̂ b̂
Ḇ̂ ḇ̂
Ĉ ĉ
C̭ c̭
D̂ d̂
Ḓ ḓ
Ê ê
Ḙ ḙ
Ế ế
Ề ề
Ể ể
Ê̄ ê̄
Ē̂ ē̂
Ê̌ ê̌
Ễ ễ
Ệ ệ
Ĝ ĝ
Ĥ ĥ
H̭ h̭
Î î
Ī̂ ī̂
I̭ i̭
Ī̭ ī̭
Ĵ ĵ
K̂ k̂
L̂ l̂
Ḽ ḽ
M̂ m̂
N̂ n̂
Ṋ ṋ
Ô ô
Ố ố
Ồ ồ
Ổ ổ
Ō̂ ō̂
Ỗ ỗ
Ộ ộ
R̂ r̂
R̭ r̭
Ŝ ŝ
T̂ t̂
Ṱ ṱ
Û û
Ū̂ ū̂
Ṷ ṷ
V̂ v̂
Ŵ ŵ
X̂ x̂
Ŷ ŷ
Ẑ ẑ
The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus “bent around”—a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē). The circumflex in the Latin script is chevron-shaped ( ˆ ), while the Greek circumflex may be displayed either like a tilde ( ˜ ) or like an inverted breve ( ̑ ).
In English, the circumflex, like other diacritics, is sometimes retained on loanwords that used it in the original language (for example, crème brûlée).
A similar typographical symbol, the caret (^) is used in proof-reading, in programming and in mathematics (where it is typically called a hat or roof or house).[1]
Uses[edit]
Phonetic marker[edit]
Pitch[edit]
The circumflex has its origins in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it marked long vowels that were pronounced with high and then falling pitch. In a similar vein, the circumflex is today used to mark tone contour in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The shape of the circumflex was originally a combination of the acute and grave accents (^), as it marked a syllable contracted from two vowels: an acute-accented vowel and a non-accented vowel (all non-accented syllables in Ancient Greek were once marked with a grave accent).[2][citation needed] Later a variant similar to the tilde (~) was also used.
νόος contraction
→
(synaeresis) ν-´ō-ς = νō͂ς = νοῦς nóos n-´ō-s = nō̂s = noûs
The term “circumflex” is also used to describe similar tonal accents that result from combining two vowels in related languages such as Sanskrit and Latin.
Since Modern Greek has a stress accent instead of a pitch accent, the circumflex has been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.
Length[edit]
The circumflex accent marks a long vowel in the orthography or transliteration of several languages.
In Afrikaans, the circumflex marks a vowel with a lengthened pronunciation, often arising from compensatory lengthening due to the loss of ⟨g⟩ from the original Dutch form. Examples of circumflex use in Afrikaans are sê “to say”, wêreld “world”, môre “tomorrow”, brûe “bridges”.
Akkadian. In the transliteration of this language, the circumflex indicates a long vowel resulting from an aleph contraction.
In western Cree, Sauk, and Saulteaux, the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) indicates long vowels [aː eː iː oː~uː] either with a circumflex ⟨â ê î ô⟩ or with a macron ⟨ā ē ī ō⟩.
The PDA orthography for Domari uses circumflex-bearing vowels for length.
In Emilian, â î û are used to represent [aː, iː, uː]
French. In some varieties, such as in Belgian French, Swiss French and Acadian French, vowels with a circumflex are long: fête fɛːt is longer than faite [fɛt]. This length compensates for a deleted consonant, usually s.
Standard Friulian.
Japanese. In the Nihon-shiki system of romanization, the circumflex is used to indicate long vowels. The Kunrei-shiki system, which is based on Nihon-shiki system, also uses the circumflex. The Traditional and Modified forms of the Hepburn system use the macron for this purpose, though some users may use the circumflex as a substitute if there are difficulties inputting the macron, as the two diacritics are visually similar.
Jèrriais.
In Kurmanji Kurdish, ⟨ê î û⟩ are used to represent /eː iː uː/. [3]
Ligurian language.
In Luxembourgish m̂ n̂ can be used to indicate nasalisation of a vowel. Also, the circumflex can be over the vowel to indicate nasalisation. In either case, the circumflex is rare.
Old Malay
In Serbo-Croatian the circumflex can be used to distinguish homographs, and it is called the “genitive sign” or “length sign”. Examples include sam “am” versus sâm “alone”. For example, the phrase “I am alone” may be written Ja sam sâm to improve clarity. Another example: da “yes”, dâ “gives”.[4]
Turkish. According to Turkish Language Association orthography, düzeltme işareti “correction mark” over a, i and u marks a long vowel to disambiguate similar words. For example, compare ama “but” and âmâ “blind”, şura ‘that place, there’ and şûra “council”.[5] In general, circumflexes occur only in Arabic and Persian loanwords as vowel length in early Turkish was not phonemic. However, this standard was never applied entirely consistently[6] and by the early 21st century many publications had stopped using circumflexes almost entirely.[7]
Welsh. The circumflex is known as hirnod “long sign” or acen grom “crooked accent”, but more usually and colloquially as to bach “little roof”. It lengthens a stressed vowel (a, e, i, o, u, w, y), and is used particularly to differentiate between homographs; e.g. tan and tân, ffon and ffôn, gem and gêm, cyn and cŷn, or gwn and gŵn. However the circumflex is only required on elongated vowels if the same word exists without the circumflex – “nos” (night), for example, has an elongated “o” sound but a circumflex is not required as the same word with a shortened “o” doesn’t exist.
In Adûnaic, the Black Speech, and Khuzdul, constructed languages of J. R. R. Tolkien, all long vowels are transcribed with the circumflex. In Sindarin, another of Tolkien’s languages, long vowels in polysyllabic words take the acute, but a circumflex in monosyllables, to mark a non-phonemic extra lengthening.
Stress[edit]
Bilingual sign showing the use of the circumflex in Welsh as an indicator of length and stress: parêd [paˈreːd] “parade”, as opposed to pared [ˈparɛd] “partition wall”.
The circumflex accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in some languages:
Portuguese â, ê, and ô are stressed “closed” vowels, opposed to their open counterparts á, é, and ó (see below).
Welsh: the circumflex, due to its function as a disambiguating lengthening sign (see above), is used in polysyllabic words with word-final long vowels. The circumflex thus indicates the stressed syllable (which would normally be on the penultimate syllable), since in Welsh, non-stressed vowels may not normally be long. This happens notably where the singular ends in an a, to, e.g. singular camera, drama, opera, sinema → plural camerâu, dramâu, operâu, sinemâu; however, it also occurs in singular nominal forms, e.g. arwyddocâd; in verbal forms, e.g. deffrônt, cryffânt; etc.
Vowel quality[edit]
In Bamanankan, it marks a falling tone, as opposed to a háček which signifies that on this syllable, the tone is rising.
In Breton, it is used on an e to show that the letter is pronounced open instead of closed.
In Bulgarian, the sound represented in Bulgarian by the Cyrillic letter ъ (er goljam) is usually transliterated as â in systems used prior to 1989. Although called a schwa (misleadingly suggesting an unstressed lax sound), it is more accurately described as a mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ/. Unlike English or French, but similar to Romanian and Afrikaans, it can be stressed.
In Pinyin romanized Mandarin Chinese, ê is used to represent the sound /ɛ/ in isolation, which occurs sometimes as an exclamation.
In French, the letter ê is normally pronounced open, like è. In the usual pronunciations of central and northern France, ô is pronounced close, like eau; in Southern France, no distinction is made between close and open o.
Portuguese â /ɐ/, ê /e/, and ô /o/ are stressed high vowels, in opposition to á /a/, é /ɛ/, and ó /ɔ/, which are stressed low vowels.
In Romanian, the circumflex is used on the vowels â and î to mark the vowel /ɨ/, similar to Russian yery. The names of these accented letters are â din a and î din i, respectively. (The letter â only appears in the middle of words; thus, its majuscule version appears only in all-capitals inscriptions.)
In Slovak, the circumflex (vokáň) turns the letter o into a diphthong: ô /uo/.
In Swedish dialect and folklore literature the circumflex is used to indicate the phonemes /a(ː)/ or /æ(ː)/ (â), /ɶ(ː)/ or /ɞ(ː)/ (ô) and /ɵ(ː)/ (û) in dialects and regional accents where these are distinct from /ɑ(ː)/ (a), /ø(ː)/ (ö) or /o(ː)/ (o or å) and /ʉ(ː)/ (u) respectively, unlike Standard Swedish where [a] and [ɑː], [ɵ] and [ʉː] are short and long allophones of the phonemes /a/ and /ʉ/ respectively, and where Old Swedish short /o/ (ŏ) has merged with /o(ː)/ from Old Swedish /ɑː/ (ā, Modern Swedish å) instead of centralizing to [ɞ] or fronting to [ɶ] and remaining a distinct phoneme (ô) as in the dialects in question. Different methods can be found in different literature, so some author may use æ instead of â, or use â where others use å̂ (å with a circumflex; for a sound between /ɑ(ː)/ and /o(ː)/).
Vietnamese â /ə/, ê /e/, and ô /o/ are higher vowels than a /ɑ/, e /ɛ/, and o /ɔ/. The circumflex can appear together with a tone mark on the same vowel, as in the word Việt. Vowels with circumflex are considered separate letters from the base vowels.
Other articulatory features[edit]
In Emilian, ê ô [eː, oː] denote both length and height. In Romagnol, they are used to represent the diphthongs /eə, oə/, whose specific articulation varies between dialects, e.g. sêl [seəl~seɛl~sæɛl~sɛɘl] “salt”.
In Chichewa, ŵ (present for example in the name of the country Malaŵi) used to denote the voiced bilabial fricative /β/; nowadays, however, most Chichewa-speakers pronounce it as a regular [w].[8]
In Pinyin, the romanized writing of Mandarin Chinese, ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ are, albeit rarely, used to represent zh [tʂ], ch [tʂʰ], and sh [ʂ], respectively.
In Esperanto, the circumflex is used on ĉ [tʃ], ĝ [dʒ], ĥ [x], ĵ [ʒ], ŝ [ʃ]. Each indicates a different consonant from the unaccented form, and is considered a separate letter for purposes of collation. (See Esperanto orthography.)
In Nsenga, ŵ denotes the labiodental approximant /ʋ/.
In Philippine languages, the circumflex (pakupyâ) is used to represent the simultaneous occurrence of a stress and a glottal stop in the last vowel of the word.[9][10][11]
In Old Tupi, the circumflex changed a vowel into a semivowel: î [j], û [w], and ŷ [ɰ].
In Rusyn, the letter ŷ [ɨ] is sometimes used to transliterate the Cyrillic ы.
In Turkish, the circumflex over a and u is sometimes used in words of Arabic or Persian derivation to indicate when a preceding consonant (k, g, l) is to be pronounced as a palatal plosive; [c], [ɟ] (kâğıt, gâvur, mahkûm, Gülgûn). The circumflex over i is used to indicate a nisba suffix (millî, dinî).[5]
In the African language Venda, a circumflex below d, l, n, and t is used to represent dental consonants: ḓ, ḽ, ṋ, ṱ.
In the 18th century, the Real Academia Española introduced the circumflex accent in Spanish to mark that a ch or x were pronounced [k] and [ks] respectively (instead of [tʃ] and [x], which were the default values): châracteres, exâcto (spelled today caracteres, exacto). This usage was quickly abandoned during the same century, once the RAE decided to use ch and x with one assigned pronunciation only: [tʃ] and [ks] respectively.
In Domari (according to the Pan-Domari Alphabet orthography), the circumflex is used on the letters <ĉ ĝ ĵ ŝ ẑ> to represent the sounds of /t͡ʃ ɣ d͡ʒ ʃ ʒ/. It is also used above vowels to indicate length.
Abbreviation, contraction, and disambiguation[edit]
English[edit]
In 18th century British English, before the cheap Penny Post and while paper was taxed, the combination ough was occasionally shortened to ô when the gh was not pronounced, to save space: thô for though, thorô for thorough, and brôt for brought.
French[edit]
In French, the circumflex generally marks the former presence of a consonant (usually s) that was deleted and is no longer pronounced. (The corresponding Norman French words, and consequently the words derived from them in English, frequently retain the lost consonant.) For example:
ancêtre “ancestor”
hôpital “hospital”
hôtel “hostel”
forêt “forest”
rôtir “to roast”
côte “rib, coast, slope”
pâté “paste”
août “August”
dépôt (from the Latin depositum ‘deposit’, but now referring to both a deposit or a storehouse of any kind)[12]
Some homophones (or near-homophones in some varieties of French) are distinguished by the circumflex. However, â, ê and ô distinguish different sounds in most varieties of French, for instance cote [kɔt] “level, mark, code number” and côte [kot] “rib, coast, hillside”.
In handwritten French, for example in taking notes, an m with a circumflex (m̂) is an informal abbreviation for même “same”.
In February 2016, the Académie française decided to remove the circumflex from about 2000 words, a plan that had been outlined since 1990. However, usage of the circumflex would not be considered incorrect.[13]
Italian[edit]
In Italian, î is occasionally used in the plural of nouns and adjectives ending with -io [jo] as a crasis mark. Other possible spellings are -ii and obsolete -j or -ij. For example, the plural of vario [ˈvaːrjo] “various” can be spelt vari, varî, varii; the pronunciation will usually stay [ˈvaːri] with only one [i]. The plural forms of principe [ˈprintʃipe] “prince” and of principio [prinˈtʃipjo] “principle, beginning” can be confusing. In pronunciation, they are distinguished by whether the stress is on the first or on the second syllable, but principi would be a correct spelling of both. When necessary to avoid ambiguity, it is advised to write the plural of principio as principî or as principii.
Norwegian[edit]
In Norwegian, the circumflex differentiates fôr “lining, fodder” from the preposition for. From a historical point of view, the circumflex also indicates that the word used to be spelled with the letter ð in Old Norse – for example, fôr is derived from fóðr, lêr ‘leather’ from leðr, and vêr “weather, ram” from veðr (both lêr and vêr only occur in the Nynorsk spelling; in Bokmål these words are spelled lær and vær). After the ð disappeared, it was replaced by a d (fodr, vedr)
.
Mathematix
In mathematics, the circumflex is used to modify variable names; it is usually read “hat”, e.g., î is “i hat”
.
The Fourier transform of a function ƒ is often denoted by {\hat {f}}.
In the notation of sets, a hat above an element signifies that the element was removed from the set, such as in {\displaystyle {x_{0},\dotsc ,{\hat {x}}{i},\dotsc ,x{n}}}, the set containing all elements {\displaystyle x_{0},\dotsc ,x_{n}} except x_{i}.
In geometry, a hat is sometimes used for an angle. For instance, the angles {\hat {A}} or {\displaystyle A{\hat {B}}C}.
In vector notation, a hat above a letter indicates a unit vector (a dimensionless vector with a magnitude of 1). For instance, {\hat {\mathbf {\imath } }}, {\hat {\mathbf {x} }}, or {\hat {\mathbf {e} }}_{1} stands for a unit vector in the direction of the x-axis of a Cartesian coordinate system.
In statistics, the hat is used to denote an estimator or an estimated value, as opposed to its theoretical counterpart. For example, in errors and residuals, the hat in {\hat {\varepsilon }} indicates an observable estimate (the residual) of an unobservable quantity called \varepsilon (the statistical error). It is read x-hat or x-roof, where x represents the character under the hat.
Music[edit]
In music theory and musicology, a circumflex above a numeral is used to make reference to a particular scale degree.
In music notation, a chevron-shaped symbol placed above a note indicates marcato, a special form of emphasis or accent. In music for string instruments, a narrow inverted chevron indicates that a note should be performed up-bow.
Circumflex in digital character sets[edit]
The precomposed characters Â/â, Ê/ê, Î/î, Ô/ô, and Û/û (which incorporate the circumflex) are included in the ISO-8859-1 character set, and dozens more are available in Unicode. In addition, Unicode has U+0302 ◌̂ COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT and U+032D ◌̭ COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT BELOW which in principle allow adding the diacritic to any base letter.
For historical reasons, there is a similar but larger character, U+005E ^ CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT (HTML ^) (^ in HTML5[14]), which is also included in ASCII but often referred to as caret instead. It is, however, unsuitable for use as a diacritic on modern computer systems, as it is a spacing character. Another spacing circumflex character in Unicode is the smaller U+02C6 ˆ MODIFIER LETTER CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT, mainly used in phonetic notations – or as a sample of the diacritic in isolation.
Typing the circumflex accent[edit]
In countries where the local language(s) routinely include letters with a circumflex, local keyboards are typically engraved with those symbols. For users with American or British QWERTY keyboards, the characters â, ĉ, ê, ĝ, ĥ, î, ĵ, ô, ŝ, û, ẃ, ý (and their uppercase equivalents) may be obtained after installing the International or extended keyboard layout setting. Then, by using AltGr+6 (^), release, then w etc. (The AltGr+6 is a dead key that applies the diacritic to the subsequent letter, if valid). Alternatively for systems with a ‘compose’ function, use compose^w, etc.
See also[edit]
Caret
Caron
Circumflex in French
Macron (diacritic)
Tilde
Turned v
References[edit]
^ Weisstein, Eric W. “Hat”. Mathworld. Wolfram. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
^ Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges (ccel.org): “155. The ancients regarded the grave originally as belonging to every syllable not accented with the acute or circumflex; and some Mss. show this in practice, e.g. πὰγκρὰτής. […]”
^ Thackston, Wheeler M. (2006). “Kurmanji Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings” (PDF). Iranian Studies at Harvard University. Harvard University. p. 11. Retrieved November 26, 2016.
^ “Genitivni znak”. Pravopis Srpskog Jezika (in Serbian).
^ Jump up to: a b www.tdk.gov.tr Archived 2007-02-21 at the Wayback Machine
^ Lewis, Geoffrey (1999). The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success.
^ Kornfilt, Jaklin (2013). Turkish.
^ “Malawi: Maláui, Malaui, Malauí, Malavi ou Malávi?”. DicionarioeGramatica.com.br. Retrieved 2015-10-25.
^ Paul Morrow (March 16, 2011). “The basics of Filipino pronunciation: Part 2 of 3 • accent marks”. Pilipino Express. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
^ Ricardo M.D. Nolasco. Grammar notes on the national language (PDF).[permanent dead link]
^ Joan Schoellner & Beverly D. Heinle, ed. (2007). Tagalog Reading Booklet (PDF). Simon & Schister’s Pimsleur. p. 5–6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-27. Retrieved 2012-07-18.
^ “”Dépôt” definition”. Larousse. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
^ “End of the circumflex? Changes in French spelling cause uproar”. BBC. 5 February 2016.
^ HTML5 is the only version of HTML that has a named entity for the circumflex, see https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html (“The following sections present the complete lists of character entity references.”) and https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/CR-html5-20140731/syntax.html#named-character-references (“Hat;”).
External links[edit]
Look up ^ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Diacritics Project – “All you need to design a font with correct accents”
Diacs and Quirks in a Nutshell – Afrikaans spelling explained
Keyboard Help – Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacritics on a computer
.
.
’tilde’
Acute accent – Wikipedia
Contents
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 ὀξεῖα (oxeîa, Modern Greek oxía) “sharp” or “high”, which was calqued (loan-translated) into Latin as acūta “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)”.
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 [ˈpɛska] “peach” (“open” or “wide” vowel, as in “pen”) and pésca [ˈpeska] “fishing” (“closed” or “narrow” vowel, as in “pain”).
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: ά (á), έ (é), ή (í), ί (í), ό (ó), ύ (ý), ώ (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).
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 words that deviate from the standardized stress patterns. It is also used to distinguish homophones such as el (the) and él (he).
Ukrainian: marks the stress, but in regular typography is only used when it can help to distinguish between homographs: за́мок (castle) vs. замо́к (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: casáu [kaˈsaɨ, kaˈsai] “to hate”, sigarét [sɪɡaˈrɛt] “cigarette”, ymbarél [əmbaˈrɛl] “umbrella”.
To mark high vowels:
Bislama. The acute is used only on é, but only in one 34 the two orthographies. It distinguishes é [e] from e [ɛ].[1] The orthography after 1995 (which has no diacritics), does not distinguish these sounds.
Catalan. The acute marks the quality of the vowels é [e] (as opposed to è [ɛ]), and ó [o] (as opposed to ò [ɔ]).
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 [e] from è [ɛ], ê [ɛ], and e [ə]. Unlike 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 [e] (as opposed to è [ɛ]), ó [u] (as opposed to ò [ɔ]) and á [ɔ/e] (as opposed to à [a]).
Scottish Gaelic (a Celtic rather than Romance language) uses/used a system in which é [eː] is contrasted with è [ɛː] and ó [oː] with ò [ɔː]. Both the grave and acute indicate length; é/è and ó/ò are thus contrasted with e [ɛ/e] and o [ɔ/o/ɤ] respectively. Besides, á appears in the words á [a], ám [ãũm] and ás [as] in order to distinguish them from a [ə], am [əm] and as [əs] respectively.[2][3] 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 /a/, é /ɛ/ and ó /ɔ/ are stressed low vowels, in opposition to â /ɐ/, ê /e/ and ô /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.
Length
Long vowels
Arabic and Persian: á, í, ú 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.
Czech: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý are the long versions of a, e, i, o, u, y. The accent is known as čárka. 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: í, ó, ú are the long equivalents of the vowels i, o, u. The ő, ű (see double acute accent) are the long equivalents of ö, ü. Both type of accents are known as hosszú ékezet (hosszú means long). The letters á and é are two long vowels but they are two vowels on their own rather than the long equivalents of a and e (see below in Letter extension).
Irish: á, é, í, ó, ú are the long equivalents of the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The accent is known as a síneadh fada /ˌʃiːnʲə ˈfadˠə/ (length accent), usually abbreviated to fada. The fada can effect pronunciation or meaning; for instance, Seán is “John” in Irish but sean means “old”.[4]
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-lived Old 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 by u-mutation.
Slovak: the acute accent is called dĺžeň in Slovak. In addition to the long vowels á, é, í, ó, ú and ý, dĺžeň is used to mark two syllabic consonants ŕ and ĺ, which are the long counterparts of syllabic r and l.
Short vowels
Ligurian: in the official orthography, é is used for short [e], and ó is used for short [u].
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 kreska (English: 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 háček in Czech and other Slavic languages (e.g. sześć [ˈʂɛɕtɕ] “six”). However, in contrast to the háček which is usually used for postalveolar consonants, the kreska denotes alveolo-palatal consonants. In traditional Polish typography, the kreska is more nearly vertical than the acute accent, and placed slightly right of center.[5] A similar rule applies to the Belarusian Latin alphabet Łacinka. 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 ć is used to represent a palatalized t.
In the romanization of Macedonian, ǵ and ḱ represent the Cyrillic letters ѓ and ќ, which stand for palatal or alveolo-palatal consonants, though gj and kj (or đ and ć) are more commonly used for this purpose[citation needed]. The same two letters are used to transcribe the postulated Proto-Indo-European phonemes /ɡʲ/ and /kʲ/.
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 η, the feminine definite article (“the”), versus ή, meaning “or”. Other cases include που (“who”/”which”) versus πού (“where”) and πως (“that”, as in “he told me that…”) versus πώς (“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.[6])
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”[7]), differentiates qué (what) from que (that), dónde and donde “where”, 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), sólo “only” (as in “solamente”) and solo “alone”. 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 [ɔa], short [ɔ] and before [a]: [õ]
í/ý: long [ʊiː], short [ʊi]
ó: long [ɔu], [ɛu] or [œu], short: [œ], except Suðuroy: [ɔ]
When ó is followed by the skerping -gv, it is pronounced [ɛ], except in Suðuroy where it is [ɔ]
ú: long [ʉu], short [ʏ]
When ú is followed by the skerping -gv, it is pronounced [ɪ]
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.
A sample extract of Icelandic.
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 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 and Polish, the acute on “ó”, historically used to indicate a lengthening of “o” [ɔ], now indicates higher pronunciation, [o] and [u], respectively.
In Turkmen, the letter ý is a consonant: [j].
Other uses
In some Basque texts predating Standard Basque, the letters r and l carry acute accents (an invention by Sabino Arana[8]), 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,[9] 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 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/.
In Emilian-Romagnol, é ó denote both length and height. In Romagnol they represent [eː, oː], while in Emilian they represent [e, o].
In Indonesian dictionaries, é is used to represent /e/, while e is used to represent /ə/.
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.[10]
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 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 (“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”).
Ǵǵ and Źź are used in Pashto in the Latin alphabet, equivalent to ږ and ځ, 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 resumé, 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, 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, crème brûlée and ancien régime.
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 to rebél), or áll trádes, to show that the phrase is pronounced as a spondee, rather than the more natural iamb.
It can indicate the sounding of an ordinarily silent letter: for example, pickéd to indicate the pronunciation [ˈpɪkɪd], rather than standard [pɪkt] (the grave 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).[11]
Technical notes
description character Unicode HTML
acute
above ◌́
combining, accent U+0301 ́
◌́
combining, tone U+0341 ́
´
spacing, symbol U+00B4 ´
´
ˊ
spacing, letter U+02CA ˊ
double
acute ◌̋
combining U+030B ̋
˝
spacing, top U+02DD ˝
˶
spacing, middle U+02F6 ˶
acute
below ◌̗
combining U+0317 ̗
ˏ
spacing, letter U+02CF ˏ
additional
diacritic Latin
— Á
á U+00C1
U+00E1 Á
á
Ǽ
ǽ U+01FC
U+01FD Ǽ
ǽ
Ć
ć U+0106
U+0107 Ć
ć
É
é U+00C9
U+00E9 É
é
Ǵ
ǵ U+01F4
U+01F5 Ǵ
ǵ
Í
í U+00CD
U+00ED Í
í
Ḱ
ḱ U+1E30
U+1E31 Ḱ
ḱ
Ĺ
ĺ U+0139
U+013A Ĺ
ĺ
Ḿ
ḿ U+1E3E
U+1E3F Ḿ
ḿ
Ń
ń U+0143
U+0144 Ń
ń
Ó
ó U+00D3
U+00F3 Ó
ó
Ǿ
ǿ U+01FE
U+01FF Ǿ
ǿ
Ṕ
ṕ U+1E54
U+1E55 Ṕ
ṕ
Ŕ
ŕ U+0154
U+0155 Ŕ
ŕ
Ś
ś U+015A
U+015B Ś
ś
Ú
ú U+00DA
U+00FA Ú
ú
Ẃ
ẃ U+1E82
U+1E83 Ẃ
ẃ
Ý
ý U+00DD
U+00FD Ý
ý
Ź
ź U+0179
U+017A Ź
ź
double
acute Ő
ő U+0150
U+0151 Ő
ő
Ű
ű U+0170
U+0171 Ű
ű
diaeresis Ḯ
ḯ U+1E2E
U+1E2F Ḯ
ḯ
Ǘ
ǘ U+01D7
U+01D8 Ǘ
ǘ
ring Ǻ
ǻ U+01FA
U+01FB Ǻ
ǻ
cedilla Ḉ
ḉ U+1E08
U+1E09 Ḉ
ḉ
macron Ḗ
ḗ U+1E16
U+1E17 Ḗ
ḗ
Ṓ
ṓ U+1E52
U+1E53 Ṓ
ṓ
tilde Ṍ
ṍ U+1E4C
U+1E4D Ṍ
ṍ
Ṹ
ṹ U+1E78
U+1E79 Ṹ
ṹ
dot Ṥ
ṥ U+1E64
U+1E65 Ṥ
ṥ
circumflex Ấ
ấ U+1EA4
U+1EA5 Ấ
ấ
Ế
ế U+1EBE
U+1EBF Ế
ế
Ố
ố U+1ED0
U+1ED1 Ố
ố
breve Ắ
ắ U+1EAE
U+1EAF Ắ
ắ
horn Ớ
ớ U+1EDA
U+1EDB Ớ
ớ
Ứ
ứ U+1EE8
U+1EE9 Ứ
ứ
Greek
— Ά
ά U+0386
U+03AC Ά
ά
Έ
έ U+0388
U+03AD Έ
έ
Ή
ή U+0389
U+03AE Ή
ή
Ί
ί U+038A
U+03AF Ί
ί
Ό
ό U+038C
U+03CC Ό
ό
Ύ
ύ
ϓ U+038E
U+03CD
U+03D3 Ύ
ύ
ϓ
Ώ
ώ U+038F
U+03CE Ώ
ώ
diaeresis ◌̈́ combining
dialytika and tonos U+0344 ̈́
΅ spacing
dialytika and tonos U+0385 ΅
—
ΐ —
U+0390 —
ΐ
—
ΰ —
U+03B0 —
ΰ
Cyrillic
— Ѓ
ѓ U+0403
U+0453 Ѓ
ѓ
Ќ
ќ U+040C
U+045C Ќ
ќ
Ӳ
ӳ U+04F2
U+04F3 Ӳ
ӳ
The ISO-8859-1 and Windows-1252 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.
Microsoft Windows
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. Some young computer users got in the habit of not writing accented letters at all.[12] The codes (which come from the IBM PC encoding) are:
160 for á
130 for é
161 for í
162 for ó
163 for ú
On some non-US keyboard layouts (e.g. Hiberno-English), these letters can also be made by holding Ctrl+Alt (or Alt Gr) and the desired letter.
Microsoft Office
To input an accented letter in a Microsoft Office software (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, etc.), hold the Ctrl key, press the apostrophe (‘) key once, release the Ctrl key, and then press the desired letter.
Macintosh OS X
On a Macintosh computer, 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.
Keyboards
Because keyboards have only a limited number of keys, English keyboards do not have keys for accented characters. The concept of dead key, a key that modified the meaning of the next key press, was developed to overcome this problem. This acute accent key was already present on typewriters where it typed the accent without moving the carriage, so a normal letter could be written on the same place.
Internet
Some sites, such as Wikipedia or the Alta Vista automatic translator,[13] allow inserting such symbols by clicking on a link in a box.
Limitations
In the Dutch language, emphasis is expressed with an acute accent, and accents should be used on both letters of a compound vowel. However, words with the IJ digraph, such as blijf, mij, zij, and wijten, require an accent on the j when emphasized (blíj́f, míj́, zíj́, wíj́ten), which is usually not available on digital text entry systems. Therefore the acute accent on the j is omitted most of the time, leaving an accent only on the i (blíjf, míj, zíj, wíjten).[14]
The j with acute accent does not have a dedicated glyph in Unicode, so a combining character is needed to represent it in digital text.
.
.
“grave accent”
Grave accent – Wikipedia
The grave accent ( ` ) (/ɡreɪv/[1][2] or /ɡrɑːv/[1][2]) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in English, French, Dutch, Italian, and many other western European languages. It is also used in other languages using the Latin alphabet, such as Mohawk and Yoruba, and with non-Latin writing systems such as the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets and the Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao semi-syllabary. It has no single meaning, but can indicate pitch, stress, or other features.
Contents
Uses
Pitch
The grave accent first appeared in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek to mark a lower pitch than the high pitch of the acute 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 and circumflex have been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.
The accent mark was called βαρεῖα, the feminine form of the adjective βαρύς (barús), meaning “heavy” or “low in pitch”. This was calqued (loan-translated) into Latin as gravis, which then became the English word grave.
Stress
The grave accent marks the stressed vowels of words in Maltese, Catalan, and Italian.
A general rule in Italian 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 an acute accent or a grave accent, depending on whether the final e or o sound is closed or open, respectively. Some examples of words with a final grave accent are città (“city”), così (“so/then/thus”), più (“more”/”plus”), Mosè (“Moses”), and portò (“[he/she/it] brought/carried”). Typists who use a keyboard without accented characters and are unfamiliar with input methods for typing accented letters sometimes use a separate grave accent or even an apostrophe instead of the proper accent character. This is nonstandard but is especially common when typing capital letters: *E` or *E’ instead of È (“[he/she/it] is”). Other mistakes arise from the misunderstanding of truncated and elided words: the phrase un po’ (“a little”), which is the truncated version of un 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 as pero (“pear tree”) and però (“but”), and Papa (“Pope”) and papà (“dad”); the last example is also valid for Catalan.
In Bulgarian, the grave accent sometimes appears on the vowels а, о, у, е, и, and ъ 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”) and пара̀ (parà, “cent/penny, money”), въ̀лна (vằlna, “wool”) and вълна̀ (vǎlnà, “wave”).
In Macedonian the stress mark is orthographically required to distinguish homographs (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, and Russian 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).
In Serbo-Croatian and in Slovene, 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). The system is identical both in Latin and Cyrillic scripts.
In modern Church 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.
In Ligurian, the grave accent marks the accented short vowel of a word in à (sound [a]), è (sound [ɛ]), ì (sound [i]) and ù (sound [y]). For ò, it indicates the short sound of [o], but may not be the stressed vowel of the word.[citation needed]
Height
The grave accent marks the height or openness of the vowels e and o, indicating that they are pronounced open: è [ɛ] (as opposed to é [e]); ò [ɔ] (as opposed to ó [o]), in several Romance languages:
Catalan uses the accent on three letters (a, e, and o).
French orthography uses the accent on three letters (a, e, and u).
The ù is used in only one word, où, to distinguish it from its homophone ou.
The à is used in only a small closed class of words, including à, là, and çà (homophones of a, la, and ça respectively), and déjà.
The è is used more broadly to represent the vowel /ε/, in positions where a plain e would be pronounced as /ə/ (schwa). Many verb conjugations contain regular alternations between è and e; for example, the accent mark in the present tense verb lève [lεv] distinguishes the vowel’s pronunciation from the schwa in the infinitive, lever [ləve].
Ligurian also uses the grave accent to distinguish the sound [o], written ò, from the sound [u], written ó or o.
Disambiguation
In several languages, the grave accent distinguishes both homophones and words that otherwise would be homographs:
In Bulgarian and Macedonian, it distinguishes the conjunction и (“and”) from the short-form feminine possessive pronoun ѝ.
In Catalan, it distinguishes homophone words such as ma (“my (f)”) and mà (“hand”).
In French the grave accent on the letters a and u has no effect on pronunciation and just distinguishes homonyms otherwise spelled the same, for example the preposition à (“to/belonging to/towards”) from the verb a (“[he/she/it] has”) as well as the adverb là (“there”) and the feminine definite article la; it is also used in the words déjà (“already”), deçà (preceded by en or au, and meaning “closer than” or “inferior to (a given value)”), the phrase çà et là (“hither and thither”; without the accents, it would literally mean “it and the”) and its functional synonym deçà, delà. It is used on the letter u only to distinguish où (“where”) and ou (“or”). È is rarely used to distinguish homonyms except in dès/des (“since/some”), ès/es (“in/(thou) art”), and lès/les (“near/the”).
In Italian, it distinguishes, for example, the feminine article la from the adverb là (“there”).
In Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk), the grave accent separates words that would otherwise be identical: og (and) and òg (too). Popular usage, possibly because Norwegian rarely uses diacritics, often leads to a grave accent in place of an acute accent.
In Romansh, it distinguishes (in the Rumantsch Grischun standard) e (“and”) from the verb form è (“he/she/it is”) and en (“in”) from èn (“they are”). It also marks distinctions of stress (gia “already” vs. gìa “violin”) and of vowel quality (letg “bed” vs. lètg “marriage”).
Length
In Welsh, the accent denotes a short vowel sound in a word that would otherwise be pronounced with a long vowel sound: mẁg [mʊɡ] “mug” versus mwg [muːɡ] “smoke”.
In Scottish Gaelic, it denotes a long vowel, such as cùis kʰuːʃ, compared with cuir kʰuɾʲ. The use of acute accents to denote the rarer close long vowels, leaving the grave accents for the open long ones, is seen in older texts, but it is no longer allowed according to the new orthographical conventions.
Tone
In some tonal languages such as Vietnamese, and Mandarin Chinese (when it is written in Hanyu Pinyin or Zhuyin Fuhao), the grave accent indicates a falling tone. The alternative to the grave accent in Mandarin is the numeral 4 after the syllable: pà = pa4.
In African languages and in International Phonetic Alphabet, the grave accent often indicates a low tone: Nobiin jàkkàr (“fish-hook”), Yoruba àgbọ̀n (“chin”), Hausa màcè (“woman”).
The grave accent represents the low tone in Kanien’kéha or Mohawk.
Other uses
In Emilian-Romagnol, a grave accent placed over e or o denotes both length and openness. In Emilian è and ò represent [ɛː] and [ɔː], while in Romagnol they represent [ɛ] and [ɔ].
In Portuguese, the grave accent indicates the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words (crasis). For example, instead of a aquela hora (“at that hour”), one says and writes àquela hora.
In Hawaiian, the grave accent is not placed over another character but is sometimes encountered as a typographically easier substitute for the ʻokina: Hawai`i instead of Hawaiʻi.
English
The grave accent, though rare in English 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 word looked is usually pronounced /lʊkt/ as a single syllable, with the e silent; when written as lookèd, the e is pronounced: /ˈlʊkɪd/ look-ed). In this capacity, it can also distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like the past tense of learn, learned /lɜːrnd/, from the adjective learnèd /ˈlɜːrnɪd/ (for example, “a very learnèd man”).
A grave accent can also occur in a foreign (usually French) term which has not been anglicised: for example, vis-à-vis, pièce de résistance or crème brûlée. It also may occur in an English name, often as an affectation, as for example in the case of Albert Ketèlbey.
As surrogate of apostrophe or (opening) single quote
The layout of some European PC keyboards combined with problematic keyboard driver semantics causes many users to use a grave accent or an acute accent instead of an apostrophe when typing in English (e.g. typing Brian`s Theater or Brian´s Theater instead of Brian’s Theater).[3]
Additionally ASCII grave accent character (U+0060 ` GRAVE ACCENT) was often used as surrogate of opening single quote, together with ASCII typewriter apostrophe (U+0027 ‘ APOSTROPHE) used as closing single quote; double quotes were sometimes substituted by two consecutive grave accents and two consecutive typewriter apostrophes (“…”).
Although Unicode now provides separate characters for single and double quotes, such style is sometimes used even nowadays
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examples are:
output generated by some of UNIX console programs,
rendering of man pages within some environments,
technical documentation written long ago or written in old-school manner
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However, as time goes on, such style is used less and less, and even institutions that traditionally were using that style are now abandoning it
Technical notes
description character Unicode HTML
grave
above ◌̀
combining, accent U+0300 ̀
◌̀
combining, tone U+0340 ̀
spacing, symbol U+0060 `
ˋ
spacing, letter U+02CB ˋ
double
grave ◌̏
combining U+030F ̏
˵
spacing, middle U+02F5 ˵
middle
grave ˴
spacing, middle U+02F4 ˴
grave
below ◌̖
combining U+0316 ̖
ˎ
spacing, letter U+02CE ˎ
additional
diacritic Latin
— À
à U+00C0
U+00E0 À
à
È
è U+00C8
U+00E8 È
è
Ì
ì U+00CC
U+00EC Ì
ì
Ò
ò U+00D2
U+00F2 Ò
ò
Ù
ù U+00D9
U+00F9 Ù
ù
Ǹ
ǹ U+01F8
U+01F9 Ǹ
ǹ
Ẁ
ẁ U+1E80
U+1E81 Ẁ
ẁ
Ỳ
ỳ U+1EF2
U+1EF3 Ỳ
ỳ
diaeresis Ǜ
ǜ U+01DB
U+01DC Ǜ
ǜ
double
grave Ȁ
ȁ U+0200
U+0201 Ȁ
ȁ
Ȅ
ȅ U+0204
U+0205 Ȅ
ȅ
Ȉ
ȉ U+0208
U+0209 Ȉ
ȉ
Ȍ
ȍ U+020C
U+020D Ȍ
ȍ
Ȑ
ȑ U+0210
U+0211 Ȑ
ȑ
Ȕ
ȕ U+0214
U+0215 Ȕ
ȕ
macron Ḕ
ḕ U+1E14
U+1E15 Ḕ
ḕ
Ṑ
ṑ U+1E50
U+1E51 Ṑ
ṑ
circumflex Ầ
ầ U+1EA6
U+1EA7 Ầ
ầ
Ề
ề U+1EC0
U+1EC1 Ề
ề
Ồ
ồ U+1ED2
U+1ED3 Ồ
ồ
breve Ằ
ằ U+1EB0
U+1EB1 Ằ
ằ
horn Ờ
ờ U+1EDC
U+1EDD Ờ
ờ
Ừ
ừ U+1EEA
U+1EEB Ừ
ừ
Cyrillic
— Ѐ
ѐ U+0400
U+0450 Ѐ
ѐ
Ѝ
ѝ U+040D
U+045D Ѝ
ѝ
Ѷ
ѷ U+0476
U+0477 Ѷ
ѷ
Greek (varia)
— U+1FEF `
Ὰ
ὰ U+1FBA
U+1F70 Ὰ
ὰ
Ὲ
ὲ U+1FC8
U+1F72 Ὲ
ὲ
Ὴ
ὴ U+1FCA
U+1F74 Ὴ
ὴ
Ὶ
ὶ U+1FDA
U+1F76 Ὶ
ὶ
Ὸ
ὸ U+1FF8
U+1F78 Ὸ
ὸ
Ὺ
ὺ U+1FEA
U+1F7A Ὺ
ὺ
Ὼ
ὼ U+1FFA
U+1F7C Ὼ
ὼ
smooth
breathing ῍ U+1FCD ῍
Ἂ
ἂ U+1F0A
U+1F02 Ἂ
ἂ
Ἒ
ἒ U+1F1A
U+1F12 Ἒ
ἒ
Ἢ
ἢ U+1F2A
U+1F22 Ἢ
ἢ
Ἲ
ἲ U+1F3A
U+1F32 Ἲ
ἲ
Ὂ
ὂ U+1F4A
U+1F42 Ὂ
ὂ
—
ὒ —
U+1F52 —
ὒ
Ὢ
ὢ U+1F6A
U+1F62 Ὢ
ὢ
rough
breathing ῝ U+1FDD ῝
Ἃ
ἃ U+1F0B
U+1F03 Ἃ
ἃ
Ἓ
ἓ U+1F1B
U+1F13 Ἓ
ἓ
Ἣ
ἣ U+1F2B
U+1F23 Ἣ
ἣ
Ἳ
ἳ U+1F3B
U+1F33 Ἳ
ἳ
Ὃ
ὃ U+1F4B
U+1F43 Ὃ
ὃ
Ὓ
ὓ U+1F5B
U+1F53 Ὓ
ὓ
Ὣ
ὣ U+1F6B
U+1F63 Ὣ
ὣ
iota
subscript —
ᾲ —
U+1FB2 —
ᾲ
—
ῂ —
U+1FC2 —
ῂ
—
ῲ —
U+1FF2 —
ῲ
smooth
breathing,
iota
subscript ᾊ
ᾂ U+1F8A
U+1F82 ᾊ
ᾂ
ᾚ
ᾒ U+1F9A
U+1F92 ᾚ
ᾒ
ᾪ
ᾢ U+1FAA
U+1FA2 ᾪ
ᾢ
rough
breathing,
iota
subscript ᾋ
ᾃ U+1F8B
U+1F83 ᾋ
ᾃ
ᾛ
ᾓ U+1F9B
U+1F93 ᾛ
ᾓ
ᾫ
ᾣ U+1FAB
U+1FA3 ᾫ
ᾣ
diaeresis ῭ U+1FED ῭
—
ῒ —
U+1FD2 —
ῒ
—
ῢ —
U+1FE2 —
ῢ
The Unicode standard makes dozens of letters with a grave accent available as precomposed characters. The older ISO-8859-1 character encoding only includes the letters à, è, ì, ò, ù, and their respective capital forms. In the much older, limited 7-bit ASCII character set, the grave accent is encoded as character 96 (hex 60). Outside the US, character 96 is often replaced by accented letters. In the French ISO 646 standard, the character at this position is µ. Many older UK computers, such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro, have the £ symbol as character 96, though the British ISO 646 variant ultimately placed this symbol at position 35 instead.
On many computer keyboards, the grave accent is a key by itself. Due to the character’s presence in ASCII this is primarily used to actually type that character, though some layouts[which?] may use it as a dead key to modify the following letter. On a US and UK QWERTY keyboard, the ` key is placed in the top left corner to the left of the 1 key. On a Czech QWERTZ keyboard, the equivalent keystroke is usually mapped to Alt Gr+ý.
On a Mac, to get a character such as à, the user can type ⌥ Option+and then the vowel. For example, to make à, the user can type ⌥ Option+ and then a, and to make À, the user can type ⌥ Option+` and then ⇧ Shift+a. In iOS and most Android 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 make à, the user can tap and hold a and then tap or slide to à. Mac versions of OS 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 the X Window System, to get a character such as à, the user should press Compose followed by `, then the vowel. The compose key on modern keyboards is usually mapped to a ⊞ Win key or ⇧ Shift+Alt Gr.[6]
Games
In many PC-based computer games in the US and UK, the ` key (on U.S. English and U.K. keyboards) is used to open the console so the user can execute script commands via its CLI.[citation needed] This is true for games such as Battlefield 3, Half-Life, Halo CE, Quake, Half-Life 2, Blockland, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Unreal, Counter-Strike, Crysis, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim,[7] Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, RuneScape, and others based on the Quake engine or Source engine.[citation needed]
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Use in programming
Programmers use the grave accent symbol as a separate character (i.e., not combined with any letter) for a number of tasks. In this role, it is known as a backquote, or backtick.
Many of the Unix shells and the programming languages Perl, PHP, and Ruby use pairs of this character to indicate command substitution, that is, substitution of the standard output from one command into a line of text defining another command. For example, using $ as the symbol representing a terminal prompt, the code line:
$ echo It is now date
is equivalent, after command substitution, to the command:
$ echo It is now Sat Mar 21 16:05:29 GMT 2020
which then, on execution, produces the output:
It is now Sat Mar 21 16:05:29 GMT 2020
It is sometimes used in source code comments to indicate code, e.g.,
/* Use the printf() function. */
This is also the format the Markdown formatter uses to indicate code.[8] Some variations of Markdown support “fenced code blocks” that span multiple lines of code, starting (and ending) with three backticks in a row (“`).[9]
Various programming and scripting languages use the backquote character:
The ... syntax is referred to as command substitution. It replaces a command with its output
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The use of backticks for command substitution is now largely deprecated in favor of the notation $(…), so that one of the examples above would be re-written:
$ echo It is now $(date)
The latter syntax allows easier multiple nesting than with backquotes such as, for example:
$ cd $(dirname $(type -P touch))
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*👨🔬🕵️♀️🙇♀️*SKETCHES*🙇♂️👩🔬🕵️♂️*
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