Á, á ( a-

acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...

) is a letter of the

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

(

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

Blackfoot The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places *Czech, ...

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

, Faroese, Galician, Hungarian, Icelandic,

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: *Lakota, Iowa *Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County *Lakota ...

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

Sámi The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Murmansk Oblast, Rus ...

, Slovak,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

, and

Western Apache The Western Apache live primarily in east central Arizona, in the United States. Most live within reservations. The Fort Apache Indian Reservation, San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Tonto Apache, and the Fort McDowe ...

languages as a variant of the letter a. It is sometimes confused with à; e.g. "5 pommes á $1", which is supposed to be written as "5 pommes à $1" (meaning "5 apples at 1 dollar each" in French).

Usage in various languages

Chinese

In Chinese

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

á is the ''yángpíng'' tone ( 陽平/ 阳平 "high-rising tone") of "a".

Dutch

, the Á is used to put emphasis on an "a", either in a long "a" form like in ''háár'' ("hair"), or in a short form like in ''kán'' (the

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

"can").

Irish

, á is called ''a fada'' ("long a"), pronounced and appears in words such as ''slán'' ("goodbye"). It is the only diacritic used in Modern Irish, since the decline of the dot above many letters in the Irish language. Fada is only used on vowel letters i.e. á, é, í, ó, ú. It symbolises a lengthening of the vowel.

Czech, Hungarian, and Slovak

Á is the 2nd letter of the

, Hungarian and

Slovak language Slovak () , is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. It is part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Spoken by appro ...

s and represents the sound .

Faroese

Á is the 2nd letter of the

Faroese alphabet Faroese orthography is the method employed to write the Faroese language, using a 29-letter Latin alphabet. Alphabet The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin script: * Eth (Faroese ') never appears at the beginnin ...

and represents or .

Icelandic

Á is the second letter of the

Icelandic alphabet Icelandic refers to anything of, from, or related to Iceland and may refer to: *Icelandic people Icelanders ( is, Íslendingar) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nation who are native to the island country of Iceland and speak Icelandic. ...

and represents (as in "ow").

Kazakh

In the 2018 amends of Kazakh alphabet list, Á is defined as the second letter and represents . It has been replaced by Ä ä in the 2019 amends, and matches

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

alphabet Ә, 2017 version Aʼ and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

ٵ.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, á is used to mark a stressed in words whose stressed syllable is in an abnormal location within the word, as in ''lá'' (there) and ''rápido'' (rapid, fast). If the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, the acute accent is not used. Á contrasts with â, pronounced .

Scottish Gaelic

Á was once used in

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...

, but has now been largely superseded by à. It can still be seen in certain writings, but it is no longer used in standard orthography.

Spanish

In Spanish, á is an accented letter, pronounced just the way a is. Both á and a sound like /a/. The accent indicates the stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to "break up" a

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

or to avoid what would otherwise be

homonym In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...

s, although this does not happen with á, because a is a strong vowel and usually does not become a semivowel in a diphthong. See

Diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

and

Acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

for more details.

Vietnamese

In the

Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet ( vi, chữ Quốc ngữ, lit=script of the National language) is the modern Latin writing script or writing system for Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages originally develo ...

, á is the ''sắc'' tone (high-rising tone) of a.

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. The acute accent on ''a'' is often found in

verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English grammar, English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the ...

s and borrowed words, for example, ''casáu'' "to hate", ''caniatáu'' "to allow", ''carafán'' "caravan".

Character mappings

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:A A-acute Polish letters with diacritics