Grave accent and Talk:Pavlo Tarnovetskyy: Difference between pages

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{{Diacritical marks}}

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

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The word ''grave'' is derived from the [[Latin]] ''gravis'' (heavy), itself a translation of the Greek ''barys'' (βαρύς). In English the word is normally pronounced "grahv", IPA {{IPA|/ɡɹɑːv/}}, not like ''grave'' meaning serious or a tomb. It comes from French, where it is pronounced similarly: ''accent grave'' {{IPA|/aksɑ̃ ɡʁav/}}.

<div style="right; margin: 0em 1em; font-size: 3em; line-height: 2em">à À è È ì Ì ò Ò ù Ù</div>

== Pitch ==

The grave accent was first used in the [[polytonic orthography]] of [[Ancient Greek]], where it occured only on the last syllable of a word, in cases where the normal high [[pitch accent|pitch]] (indicated by an [[acute accent]]) was lowered because of a following word in the same sentence. Since [[Modern Greek]] has a [[stress (linguistics)|stress accent]] instead of a pitch accent, this diacritic has been replaced with an [[acute accent|acute accent mark]] in the modern [[monotonic orthography]].

== Stress ==

The grave accent marks the [[Stress (linguistics)|stressed vowel]] of a word in [[Catalan language|Catalan]] and [[Italian language|Italian]]. Some examples from are the Italian words ''città'' "city", ''morì'' "[he/she] died", ''virtù'' "virtue", ''Mosè'' "Moses", ''portò'' "[he/she] brought, carried". Especially with capital letters, an [[apostrophe]] is sometimes used instead of it in Italian, thus ''E’'' instead of ''È'' "[he/she/it] is", though this is considered (at least) inelegant and inaccurate.

In [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]] (both [[bokmål]] and [[Nynorsk]]), the grave accent is used to indicate stress on a syllable that would otherwise be unstressed. Popular usage, possibly because Norwegian rarely uses diacritics, does not respect these rules much, and there is a certain interchangeability with the [[acute accent]].

== Height==

The grave accent marks the [[vowel height|height or openness]] of the vowels ''e'' and ''o'' in several [[Romance languages]]. In [[French language|French]], [[Italian language|Italian]] and [[Catalan language|Catalan]], it indicates that these vowels are [[close-mid vowel|open]].

In [[Catalan language|Catalan]] and [[Italian language|Italian]], the grave accent, in addition to being used to indicate word stress, also indicates the [[open-mid vowel|open]] pronunciation: ''è'' {{IPA|[ɛ]}} (as opposed to ''é'' {{IPA|[e]}}); ''ò'' {{IPA|[ɔ]}} (as opposed to ''ó'' {{IPA|[o]}}).

In [[French language|French]], the grave accent on the letter ''e'' also marks the distinct quality of the vowel, ''è'' {{IPA|[ɛ]}} versus ''é'' {{IPA|[e]}}.

== Disambiguation ==

The grave accent is used to distinguish [[homophones]] in [[French language|French]], [[Italian language|Italian]] and [[Catalan language|Catalan]].

In Italian, for example, it distinguishes the conjunction ''e'' "and" from the verb ''è'' "(he/she/it) is". In [[Catalan language|Catalan]], it is also used sometimes to distinguish words with different meanings but the same pronunciation ([[homophone]]s): compare ''ma'' "my" and ''mà'' "hand".

In [[French language|French]], the grave accent on the letters ''a'' and ''u'' has no effect on pronunciation and only serves to distinguish homonyms that are otherwise spelled the same. It distinguishes the preposition ''à'' "to" and the verb ''a'' (present tense of ''avoir''), as well as the adverb ''là'' "there" and the feminine [[definite article]] ''la''; it is also used in the word ''déjà'' and the phrase ''çà et là'' ("hither and thither"; without the accent, it would literally mean "it and the"). It is used on the letter ''u'' only to distinguish ''où'' "where" and ''ou'' "or". In those French comic books which are hand-lettered all in capitals, the symbol is very short atop the ''E'' or ''U'', but slides down on the right of the ''A'', though not descending past the cross-bar.

In [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]], the grave accent also differentiates between certain words, e.g. ''og'' "and" and ''òg'' "also".

== Length ==

In [[Welsh language|Welsh]], the accent is used to denote a [[vowel length|short vowel]] sound in a word which would otherwise be pronounced with a long vowel sound, for example ''mẁg'' "mug" versus ''mwg'' "smoke".

In [[Scottish Gaelic language|Scottish Gaelic]], it denotes a long vowel.

== Tone ==

In some [[tonal language]]s such as [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] and [[Mandarin (linguistics)|Mandarin Chinese]], the grave accent is used to indicate a falling [[tone (linguistics)|tone]].

In [[African languages]], the grave accent is often used to indicate a low tone, e.g. [[Nobiin language|Nobiin]] ''jàkkàr'' 'fish-hook', [[Yoruba language|Yoruba]] ''àgbọ̀n'' 'chin', [[Hausa language|Hausa]] ''màcè'' 'woman'.

== Other uses ==

In [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], the grave accent indicates the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words ([[crasis]]). For example, instead of ''a aquela hora'', one says and writes ''àquela hora'' "at that hour".

==Use in English==

The grave accent is used in [[English language|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 {{IPA|/lʊkt/}} as a single syllable, with the ''e'' silent; when written as ''lookèd'', the ''e'' is pronounced {{IPA|/ˈlʊkɪd/}} (''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'' {{IPA|/lɜː(r)nd/}}, from the [[adjective]] ''learnèd'' {{IPA|/ˈlɜː(r)nɪd/}}.

[[Italic type|Italic]]s, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, ''[[vis-à-vis]]'', ''[[pièce de résistance]]'', ''[[crème brûlée]]''.

==Computer related==

The [[ISO-8859-1]] character encoding includes the letters ''à'', ''è'', ''ì'', ''ò'', ''ù'', and their respective [[majuscule|capital]] forms. Dozens more letters with the grave accent are available in [[Unicode]]. Unicode also provides the grave accent as a [[combining character]].

In the [[ASCII]] character set the grave accent is encoded as character 96, hex 60. Outside the U.S. character 96 is often replaced by the local currency symbol. Many much older UK computers have the [[Pound Sterling|£]] symbol as character 96.

On many computer keyboards, the grave accent occupies a key by itself, and is meant to be combined with vowels as a multi-key combination. However, programmers have used the key by itself for a number of tasks.

In many PC based computer games, the grave accent key is often used to open the console window, allowing the user to execute commands via a [[command line interface|CLI]].

When using [[TeX]] to typeset text, the grave accent on its own is used in lieu of a dedicated open-quote key. For example, <code>`</code> becomes a single opening quote (‘) and <code>``</code> becomes a double opening quote (“). Compared to algorithmic ‘quote education’ available in modern word processors, this method has the advantage of it becoming completely unambiguous (consider <code>‘the ’60s’</code> or the archaic <code>‘’twas’</code> – most modern word processors would incorrectly render these as <code>‘the ‘60s’</code> and <code>‘‘twas’</code>, respectively). The primary disadvantage is that it requires the user to adjust to this style.

Many of the [[UNIX shell]]s and the [[programming language]] [[Perl]] use pairs of this character&mdash;known as ''backquote'' or ''backtick''&mdash;to indicate substitution of the [[standard output]] from one command into a line of text defining another command.

In [[Lisp programming language|Lisp]] [[macro]] systems, the backquote character (called ''quasiquote'' in [[Scheme programming language|Scheme]]) introduces a quoted expression in which comma-substitution may occur. It is identical to the plain quote, except that symbols prefixed with a [[comma (punctuation)|comma]] will be replaced with those symbols' values as variables. This is roughly analogous to the Unix shell's variable interpolation with <CODE>$</CODE> inside double quotes.

In [[MySQL]], it is used in queries as a table and database classifier.

In the [[Python programming language|Python]] programming language, "backticks" are used as a synonym for the <code>repr()</code> function, which converts its argument to a string suitable for a programmer to view. However, this feature has been removed in the upcoming [[Python 3000]]. Backticks are also used extensively in the [[reStructuredText]] plain text markup language (implemented in the Python [[docutils]] package).

In [[Pico programming language|Pico]], the backquote is used to indicate comments in the programming language.

In [[Verilog]] the grave accent is used to help define a size constant (for example, 2`b01). Accidental use of an apostrophe instead of a grave accent is one of the top five beginner mistakes in the language.

In [[Unlambda]], the backquote character denotes function application.

==External links==

* [http://diacritics.typo.cz Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents]

* [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html ASCII and Unicode quotation marks] — "Please do not use the ASCII grave accent as a left quotation mark"

* [http://www.starr.net/is/type/kbh.html Keyboard Help] - Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer

{{Latin alphabet}}

[[Category:Diacritics]]

[[ca:Accent obert]]

[[de:Gravis]]

[[es:Acento grave]]

[[fr:Accent grave]]

[[nl:Accent grave]]

[[ja:グレイヴ・アクセント]]

[[no:Grav aksent]]

[[pl:Gravis]]

[[pt:Acento grave]]

[[sv:Grav accent]]

[[zh:重音符]]