Diacritical mark
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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 à 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.