Acute accent

An acute (Latin acutus, pointed, sharp '), French accent aigu, is a diacritical mark, or more precisely an accent, to identify a specific pronunciation or accent a letter.

The acute is a short line from bottom left to top right above the letter ( for example, á, é ) and the symmetrical counterpart to the grave. For acute and grave accent neumes created in the early Middle Ages.

• 2.1 Character Sets
• 2.2 Incorrect application

Meaning and function in different languages

The function of the Akuts varies in different languages ​​and is here because of the great diversity shown only as an example.

Greek

As the first European literary language related ancient Greek accent this form since the 3rd century BC, first as a musical accent for the rising pitch and later as a stress accent. This includes some philologists, the Ur - Ancient Greek to the tonal languages ​​. They called this accent προσῳδία ὀξεῖα Prosodia oxeia, sharp course Sang '. The Latin word acutus, sharp ' took on this additional Lehnbedeutung.

With the Greek writing reform of 1982 ( see monotonic orthography ) the acute replaced the three polytonic accents acute, grave and circumflex. He is now usually no longer οξεία called, but τόνος ( Tonos ).

Romance Languages

In French, the acute changes the pronunciation: é is a closed e [ e], comparable to the e in the German sea, whereas a mere e is normally distributed ( in French shifted toward ö ) for the schwa sound / ə / is. See also French language # pronunciation.

In Italian it denotes the closed e or o in stressed syllable ( except the penultimate ).

In Spanish, it marks the stressed syllable, if it differs from the stress rule: río [' ɾiɔ ], river' ( rio [ ɾjɔ ] ), Cádiz [' kadiθ ] ( Cadiz [ ka'diθ ] ).

Slavic Languages

A special form of Akuts is the Kreska in Polish. It is against the acute (slope in the usual fonts by 40 degrees from the vertical) with 25 degrees less inclined and each marked a palatal sound ( affected here are the letters ć, ń, ś ź and ). The grapheme { ó }, however, represents the sound [ u] as in the German word "mother " is therefore not different in phonetic terms from the Polish {u }; it has its origins in the linguistic history development of the Polish vowel system. However, no separate Unicode characters for the Kreska, so the distinction between acute and Kreska danger of disappearing.

In Czech called acute Carka and features since the 14th century, the length of the vowels á, é, í, ó, ú, ý. In Czech, one would write the German words because and as the and dén.

In Slovak it is called dĺžeň and stands for long vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý) or long syllabic consonants ( ŕ, ĺ ).

In the Cyrillic spelling of the Macedonian marked with an acute variants Ѓ and Ќ the Cyrillic alphabet Г and К exist.

Hungarian

In Hungarian, the acute stands on a long vowel, the pronunciation of which may change additionally ( a, e, á, é ). Furthermore, the Hungarian has a double Acute: It modifies the short umlaut Ö, ö, Ü, ü ( with an umlaut ) to long umlauts on a " umlaut lines " O, o, u, u.

Germanic Languages

In the Swedish language the acute occurs in single words, especially in names ( Linnaeus ) and French loanwords ( ateljé, armé from French atelier, armée ). It shows the emphasis by pressure accent (not to be confused with the two tonal accents of Swedish ).

In Danish, one sees in certain words the é to view the special emphasis in the sentence: en bil, ( any ) one car ' versus én bil, a car ( and not more ) ' - also in Dutch: een auto against één car.

The acute served in Old Icelandic / Old Norse the marking of long vowels, as is known by the first grammatical treatise. - In modern Icelandic still all vowels come out of < æ > and < ö > both with and without acute that one Broddur in Icelandic ( sting ) calls it: . The old long vowels have changed qualitatively over the centuries. It came as the Germans diphthongization (HUS House ) or palatalization. As in NHG the length of vowels in Neuisländischen is no longer absolute, but is determined solely by the syllable structure. Every vowel and diphthong can be short or long in Icelandic. Therefore, the acute called today no long sound, but another: called short or long / a /, < á >, however short or long / au /, short or long / ɛ /, < é > rising diphthong / jɛ /; / o /, < ó > / ou /; / ʏ /, < ú > / u /; and the umlaut dull / ɪ /, < í > and the umlaut < ý > bright / i /. Since up to and are shown for / ɛi / all diphthongs by single letters with acute, is between two vowels always a syllable boundary: / fau | einɪr / (few ), < OA > / ou | wa / ( shudder ).