Grave accent

The grave accent ‹ ◌̀ › is an orthographic sign used in the writing of several languages to indicate various properties (such as openness, intensity, or tone) in those languages. The grave accent has no use in the modern Spanish language, but only the acute accent («´»).

The grave accent indicates the opening of the vowels e and o in various Romance languages. In Catalan, French and Italian, it indicates that these vowels are open: è is pronounced [ɛ] and ò is pronounced [ɔ].

It is also used in some programming language, for example JavaScript or Markdown.

Intensity

In Spanish, the grave accent was written on the vowel of the last syllable of some words, usually acute verb forms, especially those of the third person singular of the simple past tense (or past tense) ending in –o, as mudò, hablò, mandò, but also others such as està, dexè, or igualarà, which, without the tilde, could be confused with plain words (mute, I speak, I command, I leave, it is, it will match). The grave accent was also used, without prosodic value, in monosyllables made up of a single vowel, such as the conjunctions è, ò, ù, the preposition à and, sometimes, the verbal form à of the verb "aver" (today have).

In the Andalusian dialect, a proposal has been made to change the spelling and grammar of this dialect, it is called Standard for Andalusian (or «Êttandâ pal andalûh», EPA), it will be used to differentiate a word that has different grammatical functions and different pronunciation, this will be the diacritic graphic orthographic accent.

In Italian and Catalan, the grave accent indicates that the accented vowel is pronounced with greater intensity.

In Italian it is only used on the final syllable when it ends in a vowel: virtù. It is very common that when the word is written in all caps the grave accent is replaced by an apostrophe after the vowel (for example virtù becomes «VIRTU' »), but it is not correct in Italian to write VIRTU' , otherwise it is correct to write VIRTÙ.

In Catalan, the letter a can only be written with a grave accent, never with an acute accent: Català.

In Portuguese it is only used in the word à, which means "a la".

Tone

In tonal languages that have a contour tone system such as Vietnamese and Mandarin, the grave accent represents a falling tone. In tonal languages that have a register tone system such as Hausa and Yoruba, the grave accent represents a low tone.

Disambiguation

In French, the grave accent is used on the a or u to differentiate homophones: ou (o) and où (where). Something similar happens in Catalan where, for example, the homophones ma (mi) and mà (hand) are distinguished by the grave accent, although in this language it also indicates the opening of the vowels A, E and O in stressed position, such as: italià, cèl lula, francès and òpera.

French spelling

In French, the distinction between acute and grave accent on the letter e, was historically introduced to mark a different pronunciation, although it should be noted that this distinction has no etymological significance.

Usually the grave accent is used in word endings such as (ète, ième, ère), examples:

• Ète - Complète
• Ième - Troisième
• Ère - Sorcière

Also, it is used to differentiate words like à (adverb) instead of a (has). In truth, it is also used to give a rather strong or intense tone to the word. the rule; The accented e is pronounced strongly and not softly or closed as in Spanish.

From the third edition in 1740 of the dictionary of the French Academy, for example, the spelling événement is indicated for that word, but on the occasion of the seventh edition in 1878, the Academy rectified the accentuation of many terms following the phonetic evolution of the language; thus for example at that time, the words collège and avènement were changed to the new spelling collège and avènement. Despite these changes in the writing regulations, some words such as événement were not then rectified, and therefore that spelling continued to be used.

The 1990 Report on spelling rectifications advocates regularizing the spelling of this type of word as événement, and since the end of the 20th century, French dictionaries precisely promoted in particular the same, despite the fact that the other spelling of that term also used and is often mentioned; likewise and for its part, the Académie Française officially adopted the spelling évènement from 1990, but considers that "la graphie ancienne évènement n'est cependant pas considérée comme fautive, encore que rien ne la justifie plus" (the old spelling événement should not be considered improper, despite the fact that currently nothing justifies it).

It should be noted that these types of spelling recommendations analyzed in this section are more widely taught, known, and followed in other French-speaking countries (such as Switzerland or Belgium) than in France.

Other uses

In ancient Greek, the grave accent was used on the final vowel of a word, replacing the acute accent when this word was followed by another, that is, when the word was not the last in the sentence. It is speculated that perhaps it indicated a decrease in the tone of the voice, but there is nothing conclusive about it. In modern Greek, the grave accent is used in the traditional polytonic script, although this was officially abandoned by the Greek government in 1982, in favor of the monotonic script that uses nothing but the acute accent.

In English, the grave accent has been used in literary writings to indicate that the ending -ed (indicating the past tense of a regular verb) is pronounced and not silent as is the normal case: Shakespeare in Hamlet indicates silent -ed with an apostrophe in damn'd defeat (Hamlet, 2.2), but pronounced in smiling damned villain! (1.5).

In Portuguese it is used to mark the contraction of the preposition a with a demonstrative pronoun or article that begins with the same letter. This phenomenon is known as crasis (Portuguese: crase): "vou à praia" (I go to the beach), "chegamos às oito horas" (we arrived at eight), "I went to that place" (I went to that place).

References and notes