É or é (e-acute) is a letter of the Latin alphabet. In English, it is used for loanwords (such as French résumé), romanization (Japanese Pokémon) (Balinese Dénpasar, Buléléng) 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]

Balinese

edit

É In Balinese is the only diacritic found form and is used to represent [/eː/] for example:
animal:
léléipi ("snake")
kédis ("bird")
verb:
subé ("done")
méméaca (reading)
number counting:
télu ("three")
eném (six).[2][3]

Catalan

edit

In Catalan, é is used to represent [e], e.g. séc [sek] "fold". Similar to French and Italian, there is a contrast between é and è, the latter of which represents [ɛ] (e.g. què [kɛ] "what"). [4]

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 .

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

É is used in Indonesian dictionaries to denote /e/, in contrast with E, e (/ə/). For example, serang (without the acute) means "to attack," whereas Sérang (with the acute) is the provincial capital of Banten.

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.

Javanese

edit

É is used in Javanese to represent /e/. It is distinct from /ɛ/ (written è) and plain e (/ə/).

Kashubian

edit

É is the 8th letter of the Kashubian alphabet which represents /e/ and /ɨ/ at the end of a word. It also represents [ɨj] in some dialects and represents [i]/[ɨ] in area between Puck and Kartuzy.

Kurdish (?)

edit

Luxembourgish

edit
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. É also means "Russia," being the pinyin form of .

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⟩.[5]

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).

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ "Beter Afrikaans - Gravis-/akuutteken". Retrieved May 26, 2022.
  2. ^ Yonatan, Agnes Z. "Belajar Angka dalam Bahasa Bali dan Cara Penyebutannya". detikbali (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2024-01-12.
  3. ^ Media, Kompas Cyber (2022-12-14). "Penyebutan Angka 1 sampai 100 dalam Bahasa Bali Halaman all". KOMPAS.com (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2024-01-12.
  4. ^ Sebastià Bech: Apunts de fonètica catalana
  5. ^ Hardjadibrata, R. R. (1985). Sundanese: A Syntactical Analysis. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. p. 6. doi:10.15144/PL-D65. hdl:1885/146623. ISBN 9780858833203.
edit