Instead, they’re limited to “using the 26 letters of the English alphabet,” though apostrophes still somehow make the grade. In some states, such as California, however, parents are banned from giving their babies names that include accents and other diacritical marks on birth certificates and official documents. Beyoncé just wouldn’t be the same as Beyonce, right? Queen Bey even released an “accent on the é” T-shirt to drive home the point. When it comes to someone’s given name, however, not including the accent mark may be akin to misspelling the name or calling someone by a nickname they don’t use (Becky instead of Rebecca or Jimmy instead of James). For example, in most cases cafe is perfectly acceptable for café in English, and you rarely see the city of San Jose written with an accent mark. That said, over time, we tend to lose accent marks, as the pronunciations become commonplace.
exposé-same letters, but different meanings and pronunciations with the accent marks. Other examples that could be confusing include resume vs. And on a hot summer day, a nice rosé sounds a lot better than a rose with dinner … though that might be nice, too. The accent marks remain, and, in some cases, are necessary to differentiate between words that are otherwise spelled alike.įor example, you wouldn’t want to tell someone you’re going to bring them a lame shirt when you what you mean is a lamé shirt. While most words with accent marks come from other languages-Spanish and French, predominantly-some of them have become part of the English language, too. Ī grave accent, on the other hand, slants toward the left and is placed over a vowel that should be pronounced with a low or falling pitch. The acute accent, which slants toward the right, is used to indicate that the vowel over which it’s placed should be stressed the most. There are two different types of accent marks: acute and grave. That makes sense, as the adjective diacritical means “serving to distinguish.” Other diacritic marks include cedilla, tilde, circumflex, and macron. What is an accent mark, anyway?Īccent marks are diacritic marks, which are added to a letter or character to set them apart from others and “ give it a particular phonetic value, to indicate stress, etc.” So, do we really need them? Let’s take a look. Fancy? Fundamental? Or just plain frustrating to deal with? Accent marks draw a mixed reaction from people.
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