What English words other than naïve and rôle have accents?
@david_chisnall only outré words have accented letters
@david_chisnall scouse. Both English with an accent.
@david_chisnall Café was common in my childhood but now we either drop the accent or use coffee shop instead. Does rosé count, or is that french despite us drinking lots of it?
@pthane @david_chisnall
Wait, we drop the accent? When did that happen? Am I getting too old?
@grassrootsforeurope @david_chisnall I don't, but then I'm an old pedant. I think dictionaries have dropped it but I'm to idle to check.
@david_chisnall Most of the examples in the other replies are words borrowed from other languages. Whether the accent comes along for the ride is a matter of style. Many borrowed words lose their accents in English, or at least American English.
Your example of “naïve” uses a diaeresis (ok, a diacritic mark, not an accent, as another respondent pointed out) to distinguish two separate vowels from a vowel digraph. Other examples are coöperate, coördinate, reënact, reënlist, etc.
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@david_chisnall Well, there’s also café and fête (clearly showing that it is pronounced fête and not “féte”!), just for starters, but it could be argued that these are borrowings from other languages and perhaps not entirely English words…
@davecykl @david_chisnall The ê has nothing to do with pronunciation anyway. It's only put onto vowels that were followed by an S in ancient French but aren't anymore today. Like hôtel. The German word "Fest" still has that S.
Does English have any words at all that aren't stolen from Latin, French or German...?
@david_chisnall @ernestoDuracelli @davecykl as memorably described by james nicoll https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Nicoll
@david_chisnall entrée, used in english with the wrong meaning
@simon Only in American, not in English.
@david_chisnall I guess you know that both are French words. Wiktionary tells me that rôle is a dated spelling of role, but, e.g., you may use it in physique du rôle (with the French pronunciation). Also, while the circumflex is an accent, the two dots (trema) are not. But all are diacritics, (modifiers). The diaeresis (the two dots for singling out a vowel) was used in English words like coöperate. All other diacritics are used to preserve foreign pronunciation: résumé (vs resume), façade, etc.
@david_chisnall Pièce de résistance
@david_chisnall
+ mêlée
+ raison {d'état, d'étre}
+ raisonné (While looking up the others)
and if you text search in a dictionary you'll find plenty of others
@david_chisnall my rule of thumb is to put "le" in front of any otherwise ordinary English word and then the latter must be spoken in a terrible French accent. like: le terrible; le basketball; le weapon
oh the other kind of accent. nevermind!
@david_chisnall Pretty much any if you grew up outside of a small part of privileged society.
Oh, on the *letters*.
Ah. As you were.
@ptrchas3 @david_chisnall the bit in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical_marks#Native_English_words which mentions coöperative is interesting to me- I have a colleague who is vocal about writing noöne to improve "regularity of pronunciation". I think he's right, but when did English ever care about making pronunciation clear?
@david_chisnall Café?
FWIW, the ï in naïve is technically a diaresis, indicating that subsequent vowels should be pronounced as distinct syllables, not as a diphthong; whereas an accent modifies the pronunciation of the vowel. (Which doesn‘t make much sense in English anyway, with no clear phonetic mapping.)
@david_chisnall I was not aware that those had accents in English (but then I'm not a native speaker).
Does pokémon count?
@david_chisnall
Coöperation and Motörhead