É

É, é (e-acute) is a letter of the Latin alphabet. In English, it is used for loanwords (such as French résumé), romanization (Japanese Pokémon) or occasionally as a pronunciation aid in poetry.

Latin letter E with acute

Languages may use é to indicate a certain sound (French), stress pattern (Spanish), length (Czech) or tone (Vietnamese), as well as to write loanwords or distinguish identical-sounding words (Dutch). Certain romanization systems such as pinyin (Standard Chinese) also use é for tone. Some languages use the letter only in specific contexts, such as in Indonesian dictionaries.

Languages edit

Afrikaans edit

In Afrikaans, é is used to differentiate meaning and word types. For example: in a sentence that repeats a word (that contains the vowel e) with different meaning or specificity, the e in one of the occurrences could be replaced with é to indicate the different meaning or specificity. Furthermore, é is respected when writing foreign words, mainly from French; and it is used to add visual stress on words in the same way English might use italics.^[1]

Catalan edit

Czech and Slovak edit

É is the 9th letter of the Czech alphabet and the 12th letter of the Slovak alphabet and represents /ɛː/.

Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish edit

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, the letter "é" is used to indicate that a terminal syllable with the vowel e is stressed, and it is often used only when it changes the meaning. See Acute accent for a more detailed description. In addition, Danish uses é in some loanwords to represent /i/.

Dutch edit

Like in English, é is respected when writing foreign words, mainly from French. It is also used to differentiate the article "een," equivalent to either "a" or "an" in English, and "één", the number one. It is also used to add visual stress on words in the same way English might use italics. In Dutch, some people use "hé" as a greeting, like "hey" or "hi".

Emilian edit

In Emilian, é is used to represent [e], e.g. récc [rekː] "rich".

English edit

In English, the e-acute (é) has some uses, mostly in words borrowed from French, such as née, résumé, fiancée, sauté and coupé; and names such as Beyoncé, Breneé, JonBenét, and Théo. Often the purpose of the accent is to remind the reader that a final e is not silent. Pokémon, the media franchise owned by Japanese video game company and corporation Nintendo, uses [k]é to signify the proper pronunciation of the katakana ケ.

French edit

The letter é (pronounced /e/) contrasts with è (which is pronounced /ɛ/) and is widely used in French.

Galician edit

In Galician, é is used for words with irregular stress (such as inglés and café) and for distinguishing /e/ [e] and /ɛ/ [é] in minimal pairs of words.

Hungarian edit

É is the 10th letter of the Hungarian alphabet and represents /eː/.

Icelandic edit

É is the 7th letter of the Icelandic alphabet and represents /jɛː/.

Indonesian edit

Used in Indonesian dictionaries to denote /e/, in contrast with E, e /ə/.

Irish edit

In Irish the acute accent (fada) marks a long vowel and so é is pronounced /eː/.

Italian edit

É is a variant of E carrying an acute accent; it represents an /e/ carrying the tonic accent. It is used only if it is the last letter of the word except in dictionaries or when a different pronunciation may affect the meaning of a word: perché ("why"/"because", pronounced [perˈke]) and pésca ("fishing", [ˈpeska]), to be compared with caffè ("coffee", [kafˈfɛ]) and pèsca ("peach", [ˈpɛska]), which have a grave accent.

Kashubian edit

É is the 8th letter of the Kashubian alphabet and represents /ɛ/. It also represents [ej] in some dialects and represents [i]/[ɨ] in area between Puck and Kartuzy.

Luxembourgish edit

Navajo edit

In the Navajo alphabet é represents the mid front short vowel (/e/) with high tone.

Occitan edit

Polish edit

In Polish, é was historically used for a vowel called e pochylone or e ścieśnione, sounded as [e], [ɨ] or [i] depending on the dialect. Since 1891, é is no longer used in standard Polish and is replaced by the simple e. It is, however, retained in editions of poetry where the rhyme suggests pronouncing it as i or y.

Portuguese edit

In Portuguese, é is used to mark a stressed /ɛ/ in words whose stressed syllable is in unpredictable within the word, as in péssimo (very bad). If the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, the acute accent is not used. É /ɛ/ contrasts with ê /e/. É ("is") is also the third-person singular present indicative of ser ("to be").

Romagnol edit

In Romagnol é is used to represent [eː], e.g. lédar [ˈleːdar] "thieves" (Ravennate-Forlivese).

Russian edit

In Russian, é is used in the BS 2979:1958 system of Russian transliteration as the letter Э.

Scottish Gaelic edit

É was once used in Scottish Gaelic, but has now been largely superseded by "è".^{[citation needed]} It can still be seen, but it is no longer used in the standard orthography.

Spanish edit

In Spanish, é is an accented letter and is pronounced just like "e" /e/. The accent indicates the stressed syllable in words with irregular stress, as in "éxtasis" or "bebé". See Diacritic and Acute accent for more details.

Standard Chinese/Mandarin (pinyin) edit

É or é is used for /ɤ/ with a rising tone ([ɤ̌]) in Pinyin, a romanization system for Standard Chinese.

Sundanese edit

⟨É⟩ is used in Sundanese for the close-mid front unrounded vowel /e/ since 1975 with the publishing of Kamus Umum Basa Sunda (General Sundanese Dictionary), replacing the regular ⟨e⟩ used before to represent the vowel. ⟨E⟩ is now used for the mid central vowel /ə/, previously written as ⟨ê⟩.^[2]

Tuareg Berber edit

In Tuareg Berber, spoken in southern Algeria, southwestern Libya, northern Mali and northern Niger, é is one of the seven major vowels.

Vietnamese edit

In Vietnamese, the letter "é" indicates the rising tone. It can also be combined with "ê" to form "ế".

Welsh edit

In Welsh, word stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable, but one way of indicating stress on a final (short) vowel is through the use of the acute accent, often found on e in borrowed words: personél [pɛrsɔˈnɛl] "personnel", sigarét [sɪɡaˈrɛt] "cigarette", ymbarél [əmbaˈrɛl] "umbrella".

Yoruba edit

e with a Mí High with a rising tone, depicted by an acute accent The pronunciation of words in Yorùbá language is tonal; where a different pitch conveys a different word meaning or grammatical distinction.

This means that pronouncing words in Yorùbá is based on what is called Àmì ohùn – Tone Marks. These marks are applied to the top of the vowel within each syllable of a word or phrase.

There are three types of tone marks namely:

Dò Low with a falling tone, depicted by a grave accent Re Mid with a flat tone, depicted by an absence of any accent Mí High with a rising tone, depicted by an acute accent Understanding the use of tone marks is key to properly reading, writing and speaking the Yorùbá language. This is because some words have similar spellings but at the addition of tone marks, these words could have very different meanings.

Character mappings edit

Character information
Preview	É		é
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH ACUTE		LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	201	U+00C9	233	U+00E9
UTF-8	195 137	C3 89	195 169	C3 A9
Numeric character reference	É	É	é	é
Named character reference	É		é
ISO 8859-1/2/3/4/9/10/13/14/15/16	201	C9	233	E9
Mac OS Roman	131	83	142	8E

Key strokes edit

Microsoft Windows users can type an "é" by pressing Alt+130 or Alt+0233 on the numeric pad of the keyboard. "É" can be typed by pressing Alt+144 or Alt+0201.
On US International and UK English keyboard layouts, users can type the acute accent letter "é" by typing AltGR+E.
- This method can also be applied to many other acute accented letters which do not appear on the standard US English keyboard layout.
In Microsoft Word, users can press Ctrl+' (apostrophe), then E or ⇧ Shift+E for "é" or "É".
On macOS, users can press ⌥ Option+E, then E or ⇧ Shift+E for "é" or "É".
On macOS with French keyboard, users can use ⇪ Caps Lock then the é key which is readily available on such keyboards,
Using a compose key, users can hold Compose and press ' (apostrophe) E for "é" or Compose ' (apostrophe) ⇧ Shift+E for "É".
On a standard Android, Windows Mobile, or iOS keyboard, users can hold the E key until special characters appear, slide to the é, and then release.
On Unicode capable software, such as Firefox or Visual Studio Code, users can type a glyph using its Unicode code point. For example Ctrl⇧ ShiftU+c9 for "É" (U+00C9).

References edit

^ "Beter Afrikaans - Gravis-/akuutteken". Retrieved May 26, 2022.
^ Hardjadibrata, R. R. (1985). Sundanese: A Syntactical Analysis. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. p. 6. doi:10.15144/PL-D65. hdl:1885/146623. ISBN 9780858833203.

External links edit

Omniglot - writing systems & languages of the world
- Hungarian language
- Icelandic language
- Kashubian language
- Czech language
- Slovak language
- Uyghur language

[1] "Beter Afrikaans - Gravis-/akuutteken". Retrieved May 26, 2022.

[2] Hardjadibrata, R. R. (1985). Sundanese: A Syntactical Analysis. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. p. 6. doi:10.15144/PL-D65. hdl:1885/146623. ISBN 9780858833203.

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