É

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.

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

Afrikaans

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

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

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

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

Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish

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

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

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

English

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

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

Galician

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

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

Icelandic

É is the 7th letter of the Icelandic alphabet and represents /jɛː/. The letter has been used from the beginning in the Icelandic alphabet, originally the comma merely signified that it was a long rather than a short vowel. The meaning of the letter changed from merely a long -e to -ie and then -je. It fell out of use for centuries only to be reinstated by the spelling rules in 1929.

Indonesian

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

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

Italian

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

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

Kashubian

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 (?)

É is a variant of E carrying an acute accent; it represents a stressed /e/ sound in Kurdish. It is mainly used to mark stress, especially when it is the final letter of a word. In Kurdish dictionaries, it may be used to distinguish between words with different meanings or pronunciations, as with péş ("face") and pes ("dust"), where stress and meaning differ.

Luxembourgish

Navajo

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

Occitan

Polish

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

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

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

Russian

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

Scottish Gaelic

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

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)

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 俄.

Sundanese

⟨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

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

Vietnamese

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

Welsh

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

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

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

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

^ "Beter Afrikaans - Gravis-/akuutteken". Retrieved May 26, 2022.
^ Yonatan, Agnes Z. "Belajar Angka dalam Bahasa Bali dan Cara Penyebutannya". detikbali (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2024-01-12.
^ Media, Kompas Cyber (2022-12-14). "Penyebutan Angka 1 sampai 100 dalam Bahasa Bali Halaman all". KOMPAS.com (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2024-01-12.
^ Sebastià Bech: Apunts de fonètica catalana
^ 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

Omniglot - writing systems & languages of the world

[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.

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