Diacritical mark

From Conservapedia

Diacritical marks are used in languages to distinguish between two sounds represented by the same letter, or to indicate stress or tone. For example, a long A and a short A are both represented by the letter A, but one can be distinguished from the other by making Á denote the long A.

Common examples of diacritical marks include:

• Acute accent (é) - The acute accent is a symbol placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Italian.
• Circumflex (^) - An accent placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Afrikaans.
• Grave accent (è) - An accent placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French, Italian and Vietnamese.
• Umlaut (or trema) (ü) - An accent, represented by two dots above the vowel, used in some languages, especially German and Afrikaans and Nordic languages like Swedish and Finnish.