Accent marks

Latin was written without accents. Each sister added its marks later, mostly in the age of print, to fix whatever its own spelling left unclear, so the same mark rarely means the same thing twice. Spanish marks stress and nothing else. Italian marks stress only when it falls on the last vowel. Portuguese and Catalan mark stress and vowel quality at once. French marks vowel quality and history, never stress. Romanian writes no accents at all in ordinary text; its ă, â, î, ș and ț are separate letters.

Spanish: two rules and the mark that breaks them

Spanish stress is predictable. Words ending in a vowel, -n or -s stress the second-to-last syllable (casa, hablan, martes); all others stress the last (hablar, ciudad, reloj). The acute appears exactly where a word breaks the rule: café, canción, árbol, lápiz. Words stressed three from the end break it by definition, so they always carry one: música, teléfono, sábado. The acute also splits a weak vowel from its neighbour into a syllable of its own (día, país, Raúl), and it tells apart pairs of little words: tú / tu 'you / your', él / el 'he / the', sí / si 'yes / if', más / mas, té / te, sé / se, mí / mi, plus the question words qué, cómo, dónde. The Academy has long dropped the accent on solo 'only' and on demonstrative pronouns (este, ese), though writers may still add it where confusion threatens.

Italian: only at the end

Italian writes an accent only when the stress falls on the final vowel: città, virtù, così, però, perché, caffè. Inside a word, stress goes unmarked in normal writing, even where it is unpredictable (tavolo, telefono, but bambino); dictionaries add a mark to tell àncora 'anchor' from ancóra 'still'. Accents also separate one-syllable pairs: è / e 'is / and', sì / si 'yes / oneself', là / la, lì / li, dà / da, né / ne, sé / se, tè 'tea'. On e the choice of mark shows the vowel: grave è is open (è, caffè, tè), acute é closed (perché, né, sé). Italian also has open and closed e and o inside words (pèsca 'peach', pésca 'fishing'), but ordinary spelling leaves them to the reader.

Portuguese and Catalan: stress and colour in one stroke

Portuguese and Catalan both have seven stressed vowels, with an open and a closed e and o, so their marks do two jobs. In Portuguese the acute means stressed and open (avó [aˈvɔ] 'grandmother', café, é 'is'), the circumflex stressed and closed (avô [aˈvo] 'grandfather', você, português), and the tilde marks a nasal vowel (mão, irmã). In Catalan the grave means open or a (cafè [kəˈfɛ], això, català) and the acute closed or high (també, cançó, país, música); Catalan never writes á, ì or ù. The placement rules are close to Spanish ones. Both also keep a few marks to tell words apart, such as Portuguese pôr / por 'to put / by' and Catalan és / es 'is / oneself', més / mes 'more / month', són / son 'they are / sleep'; Catalan's 2016 spelling reform cut its list of these down to about fifteen.

French and Romanian: marks that aren't about stress

French stress always falls at the end of a phrase, so it needs no mark. Its accents tell you which e you are hearing (é [e], è and ê [ɛ]), record history (the circumflex of forêt is the s of forest), and separate a handful of words: a / à 'has / to', ou / où 'or / where', la / là 'the / there', du / dû. Keep them on capitals too (État), as the Académie recommends. Romanian marks sounds, not stress: ă is [ə], â and î are the same sound [ɨ] (î at the start and end of a word, â inside it: încet, a urî, România), ș is [ʃ] and ț [ts]. Older fonts often show ş and ţ with a cedilla; the correct letters have a comma below.