Grave accent

The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese, and other languages.

Related Topics:
Diacritic - Greek - 1982 - Polytonic orthography - French - Catalan - Welsh - Italian - Vietnamese - Scottish Gaelic - Norwegian - Portuguese

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à è ì ò ù

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In Greek the grave accent occurs only on the last syllable of a word, in cases where the normal high tone (indicated by an acute accent) was lowered in Ancient Greek because of a following word in the same sentence. It is used in the traditional polytonic orthography, but the monotonic orthography used for Modern Greek has replaced it with an acute accent.

Related Topics:
Greek - Acute accent - Polytonic orthography - Monotonic orthography

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In French, the grave accent has two uses. On the letter e it marks the distinct quality of the vowel: è {{IPA|}}, and e {{IPA|}}. On the letters a and u it is used only as a grammatical mark that has no effect on pronunciation. On a it distinguishes the preposition à ("to") and the verb a (present tense of avoir), as well as distinguishing là ("there") and the feminine definite article la; it is also used in the word déjà and the phrase çà et là. On u it is used only to distinguish où ("where") and ou ("or").

Related Topics:
French - Definite article

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In Catalan, the grave accent is used to mark both the stress and the distinct quality of certain stressed vowels, such as è {{IPA|}} versus é {{IPA|}}, or such as ò {{IPA|}} versus ó {{IPA|}}. The letter a is the only one that takes the grave accent but not the acute.

Related Topics:
Catalan - Stress

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In Welsh, the accent is used to denote a short vowel sound in a word which would otherwise be pronounced with a long vowel sound, for example m?g ("a mug") versus mwg ("smoke").

Related Topics:
Welsh - Short vowel

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In Italian, it marks final stress, as in virtù ("virtue") or città ("city") or as in è ("it is").

Related Topics:
Italian - Stress

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In some tonal languages such as Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese, the grave accent is used to indicate a falling tone.

Related Topics:
Tonal language - Vietnamese - Mandarin Chinese

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In Scottish Gaelic, it denotes a long vowel.

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In Norwegian (nynorsk), the grave accent is used to indicate stress on a syllable that would otherwise be unstressed. This also differentiates between certain words, e.g. og ("and") and òg ("also").

Related Topics:
Norwegian - Nynorsk

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In Portuguese, the grave accent indicates the fusion of the feminine definite article "a" with the preposition "a" (required by several verbs; can be equivalent, for instance, of "to"). The fusion is called crase: "à" or "às". The grave accent does not change the pronunciation of "a". The grave accent can be used also in the fusion of the preposition "a" and demonstrative pronouns: "aquele" and "aquela" (that one), "aqueles" and "aquelas" (those) and "aquilo" (that), composing "àquele", "àquela", "àqueles", "àquelas" and "àquilo".

Related Topics:
Portuguese - Crase

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In transliterating texts written in Cuneiform, a grave accent over the vowel indicates that the original sign is the third representing that value in the canonical lists. Thus u is used to transliterate the first sign with the phonetic value , while ù transliterates the third sign with the value (usually used for "and").

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The grave accent is used in English only in poetry and song lyrics. It indicates that a vowel usually silent is to be pronounced, in order to fit the rhythm or meter. Most often, it is applied to a word ending with -ed. For instance, the word looked is usually pronounced as a single syllable, with the e silent; when written as lookèd, the e is pronounced?look-ed. It can also be used in this capacity to distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like the past tense of learn, learned, from the adjective learnèd.

Related Topics:
English - Past tense - Adjective

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The word grave is derived from the Latin gravis (heavy), itself a translation of the Greek barys (?????). In English the word is normally pronounced "grahv" (IPA {{IPA|}}), in other words not like grave meaning serious or a tomb. It comes from French, where it is pronounced similarly: accent grave ({{IPA|}})).

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