# Diacritics



## tanzhang

What accent marks does your language uses?

In Tagalog we use three - acute, grave, and circumflex


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## Whodunit

In German, we use three umlaut marks: ä, ö, ü, Ä, Ö, Ü

There's also the special letter ß (which has no capitalized form), pronounced as eszett that stands for a sharp _s_ [IPA: s].


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## zazap

In French:
´(aigu) `(grave) ^(circonflexe) ¨(trema)


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## Outsider

Just the following six: á à â ã ç ü (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, cedille, and trema).


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## Jana337

Czech: 
* á é í ó ú ý *- čárka
* ů *- kroužek
* ě š č ř ž ď ť ň* - háček

They are independent of word stress.


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## zazap

Outsider said:


> Just the following six: á à â ã ç ü (acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, tilde, cedille, and trema).


Hey, we also have cedille in French (ç), but it's not an accent, is it?


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## Outsider

Oh, I don't want to get into the semantics of what is an "accent". I just assumed *Tanzhang* wanted to know about diacritics in general. If not, he can always cross out the illegal ones.


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## Chazzwozzer

*Turkish
üÜ/öÖ *(umlaut), *ğĞ* (breve), *çÇ*/*şŞ *(cedilla),* iİ* (dot) and *âÂ/îÎ* [not considered to be _real _letters] (circumflex)


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Oh, I don't want to get into the semantics of what is an "accent". I just assumed *Tanzhang* wanted to know about diacritics in general. If not, he can always cross out the illegal ones.


 
He should make it clear, before we get too much confusing posts. He should also point out if he's interested in accent marks in languages using a non-Latin script. Does the Arabic ش bear the three-dot accent above a س? Greek has accents to indicate the stress. Japanese, has the semi-voiced sound marker (濁音符) (just as an example).


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## Frank06

Hi,

Basically, 'real native Dutch words' (whatever those may be) don't have accent marks.

Nevertheless, in *Dutch* we do use them:
(1) to stress a word (*é, á, ó, í*)
(2) to make a distinction between two homographs, as in *een *versus *één* (resp. 'a' and 'one') and *voor* versus *vóór*. But only if the form without accent would give rise to misinterpretation. So it is certainly not obligatory.
(3) in French loan words and loan expressions (*à, é, ê, û, î, ô*) [edit: in so far they are not adapted to the 'regular' Dutch spelling] 
(4) bl*è*ren

Other diacritics
(1) ¨ to distinguish two vowels next to each other: melod*ieën*, ge*ü*pdated, etc.
(2) ü in German loanwords
(3) ç in French loans, ñ in Spanish ones

Groetjes,

Frank


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## kirsitn

Norwegian does not have any accents of its own, but the French accente grave is often misused in words of French origin, for instance kafè (French café)

There are however three letters which are not in the English alphabet; æ, ø and å. They are pronounced more or less like the a in van, the i in Sir and the o in for.


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## juronjaure

In Norwegian there is the word òg which is a stressed form of også (too) used at the end of a sentence. So there you can find the grave-accent. And isn't there also én for "one"?


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## parakseno

Normally, Romanian language doesn't mark the stress in the words and she has no accent marks. But when one wants to point out where the stress is, the acute is usually used.

Romanian has diacriticals over some letters but the letters with diacriticals are considered standalone letters: ă(a with breve), â (a with circumfelx), î (i with circumflex), ş (s with comma*) and ţ (t with comma*). In words from foreign languages (especially names) the umlaut is also used (obviously if they have an umlaut in the original language).

*Because s/t with comma is not always available in computer fonts, s/t with cedilla (see S-comma and T-comma).


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## Spectre scolaire

The first of the three letters mentioned by _kirsitn_ ( æ, ø and å ) does not really belong to the category of letters provided with diacritics; æ/Æ is a _ligature_ consisting of a + e, also found in Danish – and incidentally in Latin.

French œ (as in cœur [kœR], “heart”) is another letter of this kind, but œ, contrary to Norwegian ø, is not alphabetized separately. There are two colours of this vowel in French, the other one being [ø] as in feu, “fire; flame” - in IPA [fø]. The two diffferent [o] sounds in French are not being distinguished in script either, confer rose and nord. It is interesting to notice that vowels otherwise carry diacritics, like é and è. 

In Hungarian there is a graphic distinction between short and long [ø], respectively ö and ő.




			
				juronjaure said:
			
		

> In Norwegian there is the word òg which is a stressed form of også (too) used at the end of a sentence. So there you can find the grave-accent. And isn't there also én for "one"?


 As an addition to the diacritical inventory of Norwegian I found the word fôr, “mat til husdyr”, in http://www.dokpro.uio.no/ordboksoek.html 

​


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## Hakro

In *Finnish* we have no accent marks, as *ä* and *ö* are used as independent letters, not _umlauts_ of a and o.


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## doman

It's difficult to explain but diacritics is very important in Vietnamese.
Vietnamese has six diacritics for six tones.
For example:

a, à, á, ả, ã, ạ

You should find out 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language


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## irene.acler

In *Italian*  we have*:* 
à, è, é, ì, ò, ó, ù


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## sarcie

Irish only has one: the fada (´)
á, é, í, ó, ú

"Fada" means "long" in Irish and that's what a fada does - it elongates the vowel sound.


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## Maja

In Serbian:

diacritics: - ć, č, š, đ, ž, dž

accents:
ȁ - short-falling  accent (kratkosilazni) 
à - short-rising accent (kratkouzlazni  akcenat)
 á -  long-rising accent (dugouzlazni akcenat) 
 â - long-falling accent (dugosilazni  akcenat).


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## Whodunit

Spectre scolaire said:


> The first of the three letters mentioned by _kirsitn_ ( æ, ø and å ) does not really belong to the category of letters provided with diacritics; æ/Æ is a _ligature_ consisting of a + e, also found in Danish – and incidentally in Latin.


 
It's the same with the German ß, which is a ligature of the ſ and ʒ in Antiqua typefaces. I think it was worth mentioning, though, as a special letter of German. It appears in no other language.



> It is interesting to notice that vowels otherwise carry diacritics, like é and è.


 
They do not _have_ to carry diacritics. However, you can distinguish between the circumflex (circonflexe), acute (aigu), and grave (grave) accent. You will also find the trema and cedilla around some letters.

If I remember well, the circumflexe can have a typographical and historical meaning: The typographical one can be found in sûr/sur, dû/du. The historical issue is that in Old French some words were spelled with and _s_ according to Latin, which was later dropped: fenêtre (fenestra->fenestre), être (esse->estre). There's some inconsistency, though.



Hakro said:


> In *Finnish* we have no accent marks, as *ä* and *ö* are used as independent letters, not _umlauts_ of a and o.


 
Our ä, ö, and ü are listed like normal a, o, u, but it's wrong to write _Marchen_ if you mean _Märchen_, but no umlauts are available on your keyboard. The correct way would be _Maerchen_. I think this is a historical issue.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> If I remember well, the circumflexe can have a typographical and historical meaning: The typographical one can be found in sûr/sur, dû/du.


What you call a "typographical" meaning might best be described as "disambiguation": you use it to distinguish between homophones. However, in the case of _sûr_ (<securus) and _dû_ (<debitum?) there was also an elision along the way, like in _être_ and _fenêtre_.

You are still right, in any case, that usage is not always consistent: _théâtre_ does not correspond to any elision, or disambiguation.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> What you call a "typographical" meaning might best be described as "disambiguation": you use it to distinguish between homophones. However, in the case of _sûr_ (<securus) and _dû_ (<debitum? possible) there was also an elision along the way, like in _être_ and _fenêtre_.


 
Actually, it is used to distinguish between homophones in written languages, that's why I didn't just call it _disambiguation of homophones_, because that would imply that the circumflex helps us distinguish between them in spoken language, too, which is not the case. It is important to use the word _typographical_ in any case.



> You are still right, in any case, that usage is not always consistent: _théâtre_ does not correspond to any elision, or disambiguation.


 
Wikipedia explains it as: _In some cases, the French circumflex is used to mark vowel lengthening with an "s" elision, like in _théâtre_, from Latin _theatrum. (translated from German)

I don't like the explanation.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> Actually, it is used to distinguish between homophones in written languages, that's why I didn't just call it _disambiguation of homophones_, because that would imply that the circumflex helps us distinguish between them in spoken language, too, which is not the case. It is important to use the word _typographical_ in any case.


It seems redundant to me. Only context can disambiguate homophones _in the spoken language_, by definition.



Whodunit said:


> Wikipedia explains it as: _In some cases, the French circumflex is used to mark vowel lengthening with an "s" elision, like in _théâtre_, from Latin _theatrum. (translated from German)
> 
> I don't like the explanation.


Wikipedia is simply wrong there. There was no _s_-elision between _theatrum_ and _théâtre_.


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## Spectre scolaire

Whodunit said:
			
		

> They do not _have_ to carry diacritics.


 I wonder if you misunderstood me a trifle. 

What I wanted to say is that in French you have different vowel qualities in words like _feu_ and _cœur_, a difference which in this case is marked in script. So is the case with _p__épère _[pepεr] even if a word like _fer_ [fεr] doesn’t have any accent. There is only a historical reason for not writing *péper. When it comes to _rose _[roz] and _nord _[n0r]*), there is no graphic distinction.

*) Instead of the adequate IPA “reversed c” which I haven’t got in my font, I here _ad hoc_ write _0_.

There is a thread in the French forum, “L’importance des accents dans la langue française”, in which all the prejudices of a conventional (but highly inconsistent!) French orthography came forth. Russian is normally written without accents, but for the beginner, it is very awkward to know which syllables are subject to vowel modification due to lack of pitch accent. In Modern Greek, an accent indicating pitch is still being used, but in a text consisting of only majuscules (like in most children’s comic strips) there are normally no accents. Vowel reduction (as in Russian) does not take place in Standard Greek, and yet an abrogation of all accents in Modern Greek – a suggestion which is coming up every now and then - is a very sensible issue.

In German, on the other hand, accents for denoting _Umlaut_ are necessary, and there is no inconsistency in the usage of them. (Now, I don’t consider _Whodunit_’s ex. of _Märchen_ being written as _Maerchen_, actually imitating some versions of Gothic script). Nor is there any inconsistency, say, in Finnish and Hungarian – even if the accent in those languages are markers of _length_ and not _umlaut_.

For Hungarian one could fill out (in addition the the already mentioned ö : ő) the following:

i : í | o : ó | u : ú | ü : ű – a : á and e : é being special cases because the _quality_ of the vowel also changes, not only the length, a fact which – mutatis mutandis – reminds me of Classical Greek ε : η where the latter is not only a long [e] (required for subjunctive), but also a more open one, the long closed one being represented only by a digraph (ει). The case of Irish (cf. _sarcie_ #18) is a good parallel to Hungarian.

Some participant in this thread should probably sit down and try and generalize what accents are all about – and we have only been talking about the Latin alphabet! As far as vowels are concerned, in addition to _pitch_, _length_, _opening_, _umlaut_ and _schwa_ (as in Albanian ë), accents can also indicate _tonemes_ (like in the highly conventional Chinese _pinyin_ alphabet).




			
				Outsider said:
			
		

> Only context can disambiguate homophones _in the spoken language_, by definition.


 Absolutely correct. Chinese is here a brilliant exemple!
 ​


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## Ssara

In Swedish we use ´, as in kafé.
We also have three "extra" letters: å,ä,ö


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## Whodunit

Spectre scolaire said:


> What I wanted to say is that in French you have different vowel qualities in words like _feu_ and _cœur_, a difference which in this case is marked in script. So is the case with _p__épère _[pepεr] even if a word like _fer_ [fεr] doesn’t have any accent. There is only a historical reason for not writing *péper. When it comes to _rose _[roz] and _nord _[n0r]*), there is no graphic distinction.


Yes, that's exactly what I meant. French orthography doesn't require the use of accents on every vowel. That would be ridiculous, and I don't think this could be true for any language that uses the Latin writing system. We don't need to differentiate between the two o's in _rose_ and _nord_, because there's no closed o before an r, as far as I know. However, accents in French don't help us much to pronounce the words correctly except for the acute and grave accent on the e, although even this one can be incosistent (like in _événement_). I, personally, don't accents on the other vowels; they are only to distinguish between homophones in written language.



> There is a thread in the French forum, “L’importance des accents dans la langue française”, in which all the prejudices of a conventional (but highly inconsistent!) French orthography came forth.


I think we both agree that French orthography, especially regarding its accents, is highly inconsistent, although I must say that English isn't much more consistent either. German and Latin, for example, use more consistent spellings, in my opinion.



> Russian is normally written without accents, but for the beginner, it is very awkward to know which syllables are subject to vowel modification due to lack of pitch accent.


Yes, but should we discuss Russian, Greek, Pinyin, and Rômaji accents in this thread, too? In Arabic transcriptions, the accents are sometimes used to show the correct stress or a long vowel (this should be made clear by the writer). Normally, we do without accents in this forum and use double vowels for long ones and an apostrophe to indicate accentuation. I think Hindi and other Indian languages can do without accents, too, if they are not available, however dots below and above (for the m or n to indicate nasalization) are sometimes used.

The thread starter hasn't posted anymore, so I don't expect him to come back again to this thread and tell us if he needed an explanation on accents in language with non-Latin script.



> In Modern Greek, an accent indicating pitch is still being used, but in a text consisting of only majuscules (like in most children’s comic strips) there are normally no accents.


In Ancient Greek, there were much more accents. I don't need all of them, to be honest, only the spiritus asper and the acute accent. I consider the grave accent useless, but it is orthographically important. The circumflexe can only appear on long vowels and diphthongs, so it's basically not very important. The macron would be enough to show that an actually short vowel has to be pronounced longer. This is necessary for the different kinds of the _α_-declension.



> Vowel reduction (as in Russian) does not take place in Standard Greek, and yet an abrogation of all accents in Modern Greek – a suggestion which is coming up every now and then - is a very sensible issue.


I don't know too much about Russian etymology and vowel reduction. I have just read about it. However, I like accents in Russian and Greek, and I wouldn't mind seeing them in English and other European languages if they indicated accentuation.  In French, they wouldn't be more helpful than they already are, since French accentuation is somehow the easiest one I have ever seen. This is just my personal opinion and you might disagree on this.



> In German, on the other hand, accents for denoting _Umlaut_ are necessary, and there is no inconsistency in the usage of them.


I don't agree with you on this point. There are many umlauts in German missing: edel (deriving from _Adel_), Eltern (deriving from _alt_). The _e_ *is* an umlaut, too, but that's the one that was used in Middle High German, which is today replaced by the _ä_ umlaut. Their meaning goes back to Gothic phonological rules. There should be an _ä_ ablaut in the verbs _brennen_, _nennen_ etc. because of the subsequent _i/j_ vowel in _brannjan_, _namnjan_ etc. This is some kind of vowel harmony like in Finnish. 



> (Now, I don’t consider _Whodunit_’s ex. of _Märchen_ being written as _Maerchen_, actually imitating some versions of Gothic script).


 
I'm not sure I understand your allusion to the Gothic script. What does it have to do with umlauts?



> reminds me of Classical Greek ε : η where the latter is not only a long [e] (required for subjunctive), but also a more open one, the long closed one being represented only by a digraph (ει).


That's definitely correct, but I would point out that there was a slight _i_ sound after the long closed _e_ vowel in ει. The iota (and _i_ in modern languages, especially the West Germanic ones) has always been an indicator of vowel lengthening, remember the iota subscriptum, the German name _Voigt_ [fo:gt]. Another umlaut can be found in the German town _Duisburg_ [dy:s...]. However, the _i_ is sometimes spoken, like in Ancient Greek sometimes (δῳ > dô_i_).



> Some participant in this thread should probably sit down and try and generalize what accents are all about – and we have only been talking about the Latin alphabet! As far as vowels are concerned, in addition to _pitch_, _length_, _opening_, _umlaut_ and _schwa_ (as in Albanian ë), accents can also indicate _tonemes_ (like in the highly conventional Chinese _pinyin_ alphabet).


Yes, we should clear things up before more confusing posts can arrive.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> It seems redundant to me. Only context can disambiguate homophones _in the spoken language_, by definition.


 
That's clear. But they can be distinguished ortho_graphically_. And that is what the French accents can be for (sûr/sur, où/ou, à/a).



> Wikipedia is simply wrong there. There was no _s_-elision between _theatrum_ and _théâtre_.


 
 Mea culpa! It should be _with*out*_ instead of _with_ in my translation.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> That's clear. But they can be distinguished ortho_graphically_. And that is what the French accents can be for (sûr/sur, où/ou, à/a).


The grave accent is indeed only for distinguishing homophones. The circumflex, however, often marks an elision (it does in _sûr_). This is actually quite useful for other speakers of Romance languages. If we happen to forget the meaning of a word that contains a circumflex, we just need to think harder, and we'll probably find a cognate in our own language with a few more letters than the French word. 



Whodunit said:


> It should be _with*out*_ instead of _with_ in my translation.


As for the circumflex in _théâtre_ and so on, it seems to have been added for purely esthetic reasons.

Use of the circumflex in French.

I don't agree with what you've written above about the French orthography. Notwithstanding a few oddities like _événement_, I find the French accentuation system quite elegant and informative. It usually tells you all you need to know to pronounce a word well, without overflowing you with unnecessary information (such as the quality of the vowel "e" in closed syllables).


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> The grave accent is indeed only for distinguishing homophones. The circumflex, however, often marks an elision (it does in _sûr_).


 
I am not 100% sure about _sûr_ being an elision of _securus_. And even if, the circumflexe doesn't stand, in my opinion, for the elision, but to distnguish the homophones.



> This is actually quite useful for other speakers of Romance languages. If we happen to forget the meaning of a word that contains a circumflex, we just need to think harder, and we'll probably find a cognate in our own language with a few more letters than the French word.


 
And you think that would be more difficult if the accent wasn't written? What does the circumflexe tell you about cognates in other Romance languages?



> As for the circumflex in _théâtre_ and so on, it seems to have been added for purely esthetic reasons.


 
Yes, that would be the most plausible explanation.



> I don't agree with what you've written above about the French orthography. Notwithstanding a few oddities like _événement_, I find the French accentuation system quite elegant and informative. It usually tells you all you need to know to pronounce a word well, without overflowing you with unnecessary information (such as the quality of the vowel "e" in closed syllables).


 
I find the Spanish and Italian orthography much more consistent than the French one, not only with regard to accents. In words like où or à, the accent is useless, in my opinion. Context tells us if it has to mean _where _or _or_, _in_ or _(he) has_, respectively.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> I am not 100% sure about _sûr_ being an elision of _securus_.


See here (right at the bottom of the page). And notice also the spellings the word had in ancient French! 



Whodunit said:


> And even if, the circumflexe doesn't stand, in my opinion, for the elision, but to distnguish the homophones.


My point is that the circumflex _can_ be usually be read as a mark of elision. Regardless of whether it was originally intended as such or not.



Whodunit said:


> And you think that would be more difficult if the accent wasn't written?


I think it has helped me to guess or remember the approximate meaning of French words I did not know well on a few occasions.



Whodunit said:


> What does the circumflexe tell you about cognates in other Romance languages?


It can even help you compare it with English. Two examples:

hôpital --> Eng. hospital.
vous fûtes --> Port. vós fostes.



Whodunit said:


> I find the Spanish and Italian orthography much more consistent than the French one, not only with regard to accents.


Those are indeed very regular. I did not mean to suggest that I find the French orthography to be among the most regular. But it isn't as inconsistent as you were saying, either.



Whodunit said:


> In words like où or à, the accent is useless, in my opinion. Context tells us if it has to mean _where _or _or_, _in_ or _(he) has_, respectively.


I disagree, because both homophones in each pair, _ou_ and _où_, _a_ and _à_, show up with high frequency in French, and yet they mean quite different things.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> See here (right at the bottom of the page). And notice also the spellings the word had in ancient French!


 
Okay, that seems convincing. Nevertheless, I'm not sure yet whether the circumflexe was used for elision or distinction. I don't think we will be able to clear this issue up.



> It can even help you compare it with English. Two examples:
> 
> hôpital --> Eng. hospital.
> vous fûtes --> Port. vós fostes.


 
That's indeed sometimes very positive, but it can also be misleading: _théâtrum_ > theaster? _bête_ > best?



> But it isn't as inconsistent as you were saying, either.


 
There are also many languages with a more inconsistent spelling. To me, it is quite inconsistent, and that's a fact (at least for me).



> I disagree, because both homophones in each pair, _ou_ and _où_, _a_ and _à_, show up with high frequency in French, and yet they mean quite different things.


 
The preposition _en_ is almost as frequent as the pronoun _en_ in French, but still they look the same. Your conclusion about frequency does not make much sense to me. If we weren't used to the accented words _où_ and _à_, they would almost never seem ambiguous, because _il à_ would actually never occur in juxtaposition, so _il a_ is clear in meaning, no matter how many accents you might put on the letters.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> That's indeed sometimes very positive, but it can also be misleading: _théâtrum_ > theaster? _bête_ > best?


Beast (you can't blame French for the irregularities of English spelling). Thanks for giving me a better example. 



Whodunit said:


> The preposition _en_ is almost as frequent as the pronoun _en_ in French, but still they look the same. Your conclusion about frequency does not make much sense to me. If we weren't used to the accented words _où_ and _à_, they would almost never seem ambiguous, because _il à_ would actually never occur in juxtaposition, so _il a_ is clear in meaning, no matter how many accents you might put on the letters.


It seems to me that the pronoun _en_ is not that frequent in French, at least when compared to _a/à_ or _ou/où_. But I will not insist on this point. Alas, I don't feel comfortable enough in French to argue for or against your opinion. I would, however, consider using more complex sentences and pieces of text for the comparison, if I were you.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Beast (you can't blame French for the irregularities of English spelling). Thanks for giving me a better example.


 
That change is very recent. In Middle English, the word was _beste_. Nevertheless, the adjective _bête_ has no cognate in any other Romance or Germanic language, has it? Maybe _fêlure_ is a better example for which you won't be able to find a cognate in other languages explicable by an elision. 



> It seems to me that the pronoun _en_ is not that frequent in French, at least when compared to _a/à_ or _ou/où_. But I will not insist on this point. Alas, I don't feel comfortable enough in French to argue for or against your opinion.


 
My French isn't that good either, but it's just my personal opinion and if you were to disagree, I couldn't help it either and would have to accept that. Anyway, _en_ is not as frequent as _à_ or _ou_, but what I meant is that the preposition _en_ is nearly as frequent as the pronoun _en_.



> I would, however, consider using more complex sentences and pieces of text for the comparison, if I were you.


 
I see. However, would you mind telling me how I should prove that _en_ as a pronoun and a preposition is equally frequent? You may use the search function for _en_ on this page and see whether it is a pronoun or a preposition. There are 115 _en_'s out of approx. 9400 words on that page. In case you're interested: _à_ (167), _a_ (31), _ou_ (108), _où_ (3).


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> My French isn't that good either, but it's just my personal opinion and if you were to disagree, I couldn't help it either and would have to accept that. Anyway, _en_ is not as frequent as _à_ or _ou_, but what I meant is that the preposition _en_ is nearly as frequent as the pronoun _en_.


My argument is that in the case of _a/à_ and _ou/où_ each element in the pair seems to be relatively frequent. With _en/en_, the preposition is quite frequent, but the pronoun is fairly rare. This is just a guesstimate, though. Basically, I think there is less chance of ambiguity with _en/en_ than with _a/à_ or _ou/où_ (either for statistical reasons, or for more delicate syntactic reasons).


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## Lugubert

Whodunit said:


> Our ä, ö, and ü are listed like normal a, o, u, but it's wrong to write _Marchen_ if you mean _Märchen_, but no umlauts are available on your keyboard. The correct way would be _Maerchen_. I think this is a historical issue.


The normal Swedish explanation is that our ä started as ae, and then the e shrunk and moved on top of the a. In older manuscripts you can see that it really is an e. Likewise oe -> ö, aa-> å.


			
				Ssara said:
			
		

> In Swedish we use ´, as in kafé.


It should be mentioned that accents are used in loanwords only. The acute accent occurs in some one hundred words, all ending in stressed _e_. The accent is lost if there is an inflection ending or other added morpheme. One _kafé_, many _kafeer_. Unfortunately, the semi-official guidelines tell us not to use the accent for stress or differentiating the numeral one from the indefinite article (_en_).

The grave accent is even more rare: it mainly occurs in the French loan _à_ (_à jour _etc.) or in expressions taken over from French: _crème de la crème_. In assimilated imports, there is no accent: _ampere, kortege_ (in the latter case, c->k like in kafè).

Serious newspapers (and of course books) try to use other diacritics when printing foreign names or quotes. Our standard keyboard has "dead keys" to facilitate writing words like senõr, raison d’être, Citroën; garçon demands an extra trick in MS Word.


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## tom_in_bahia

Well, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Polish yet. I don't have those characters on my keyboard, so I'll leave it to a Pole who can explain them better (far be it for me to succeed at the phonetic distinction between c with an accent and cz)...oh, and all the Hungarian diacritics, too!

In Haitian Creole you use one diacritic in two combinations: è [E] and ò [o - not open o]. The combination é has been phased out. In situations where the French word is similar, the use of the grave accent indicates an absent "r"...however, it does not mean that the French "r" should be pronounced, just a connection, like the previous person who posted that the circumflex often indicates an absent "s" in early French orthography. (Example: fè vs. faire)


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## Whodunit

Lugubert said:


> The normal Swedish explanation is that our ä started as ae, and then the e shrunk and moved on top of the a. In older manuscripts you can see that it really is an e. Likewise oe -> ö, aa-> å.


 
Yes, the same thing happened in German. Are the Swedish _ä_, _ö_, and _å_ listed like _a_ and _o_ in dictionaries?


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## Lugubert

Whodunit said:


> Yes, the same thing happened in German. Are the Swedish _ä_, _ö_, and _å_ listed like _a_ and _o_ in dictionaries?


No, they are recognized as letters in their own right, and so our alphabet ends with ...xyzåäö.


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## Whodunit

Lugubert said:


> No, they are recognized as letters in their own right, and so our alphabet ends with ...xyzåäö.


 
Funnily, our alphabet ends in _xyzäöüß_, but _ä_ is listed as a normal _a_, _ö_ as an _o_, _ü_ as an _u_, and finally _ß_ is treated like _ss_.


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## Nizo

In *Esperanto*, there are no accent marks, as such.  Six letters have signs above them, but they are considered part of the letter, much like the dot on top of the "i" in many languages.  These letters are _ĉ_, _ĝ_, _ĥ_, _ĵ_, _ŝ_, _ŭ_.


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## kusurija

In Lithuanian there is three types of accent (kirtis) as in à, á, ã : trumpa, tvirtapradė, tvirtagalė (grave accent, acute accent, tilde). With tilde are often marked also semivowels as l, m, n. But these diacritics for accents is in use only in special literature as in textbooks in school etc. - not in common books or press.

Other sort of diacritics is nosinės in vowels (handkerchief): ą, ę, į, ų, Ą, Ę, Į, Ų, taškas (point): ė, Ė, (these indicates different quality; sometimes not pretty distingushed in speech as it is [historical] grammar case, pretty distingushed is ė/e), brūkšnis: ū, Ū (this indicates lenth; in i/y: i is _short_, y is *long*, neglecting that in other languages it is *not* case of diacritics).

Third sort of diacritics is paukštėlis (little bird) on consonants: č, š, ž, Č, Š, Ž. (these indicates fricatives). 

(my knowledge of English grammar terminology is awfully poor, so excuse me for mistakes)


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## Gwan

In Maori macrons are used to indicate long vowels. They are a flat mark like this - on top of the vowel. Sadly, I can't find any way to type these letters, but you can see them on wikipedia if interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_language#Orthography


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## Kangy

Spanish uses these diacritics:
*á é í ó ú ü*

There's also *ñ*, which is not considered to be an "n with a tilde", but a separate letter (called _eñe_)


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## Dymn

*Catalan*:

grave accent: _à è ò_
acute accent:_ é ó í ú_
diaeresis: _ï ü_
c cedilla: _ç _(_c trencada_ "broken c")
geminated l: _l·l (l geminada)_


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## ilocas2

Jana337 said:


> Czech:
> * á é í ó ú ý *- čárka (little line)
> * ů *- kroužek (little circle)
> * ě š č ř ž ď ť ň* - háček (little hook)


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## apmoy70

Modern Greek has:

The accent (΄) which signifies stress put only above vowels = *ά έ ή ί ό ού ύ αί εί οί ώ*

And the diaeresis (¨) which separates the diphthong (actually in MoGr the ancient diphthongs have undergone monophthongization and the digraphs that in the ancient language represented diphthongs, now represent monophthongs but we still name these digraphs, diphthongs) = *αϊ εϊ οϊ υϊ ηϊ οϋ*

Classical Greek had no diacritic marks.

Aristophanes of Byzantium introduced in 3rd c. BCE diacritics for writing the Koine language, to help foreigners learn the Greek pronunciation easier:

Acute (΄) which signified _high pitch_ and was put above vowels only = *ά έ ή ί ό ού ύ αί εί oί ώ*

Grave (`) which signified _lower pitch than the acute_ and was put above vowels only = *ὰ ὲ ὴ ὶ αὶ εὶ οὶ*

Circumflex ( ̃) put above long vowels and signified _high pitch followed by falling pitch_ = *ᾶ ᾷ ῆ ῇ αῖ εῖ οῖ ῶ ῷ*


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## Ífaradà

In Yorùbá:

Àmi ohùn (tonal marks):
*è* - low tone (usually called *dò*)
*ē* - mid tone (usually called *re*; can also be left unmarked)
*é* - high tone (usually called *mí*)
*èé* - rising tone (*ě* can also be used)
*éè* - falling tone (*ê* can also be used)
*ẹ* - dot used to mark a different sound than normal *e*, also applies to *o*


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## franknagy

It is interesting that the Hungarian language uses diacritics only over vowels but uses digraphs in cases of consonants, unlike the Czech and Slovak languages. 
In a Spanish word one vowel (rarely two) can wear diacritic because they determine the stressed syllable except the tram on ü.
In a Hungarian words all vowels may have diacritics because the unstressed syllables can contain long vowels.

The above difference infers different ways of typing accented vowels on computer keyboards:
The Spanish (Portuguese, French, ...) way is: Type a diacritic before the naked vowel. The keyboard interpreter merges them.
The Hungarian way is: Exile exotic characters from the right side of the keyboard in order to get free one-keystroke entry for accented letters
---789ÖÜÓ
---IOPŐÚ
---JLÉÁŰ
The exiled brackets, duck beaks need two-fingers [right Alt]+[something].


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