Á

Á, á (a-acute) is a letter of the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Sámi, Slovak, Dutch, Galician, Lakota, Navajo, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Welsh as a variant of the letter “a”. It also appears in Blackfoot. It is sometimes confused with à; e.g. "5 apples á $1", which is more commonly written as "5 apples à $1" (French for "5 apples at 1 dollar each").

Usage in various languages

Chinese

In Chinese pinyin á is the yángpíng tone (阳平, high-rising tone) of "a".

Irish

In Irish, á is called "a fada" (long a), pronounced [ɑː] 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, for example, "a" for "around" and "á" for "fall".

Czech, Hungarian, and Slovak

Á is the 2nd letter of the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak languages and represents /aː/.

Faroese

Á is the 2nd letter of the Faroese alphabet and represents /ɔ/ or /ɔaː/.

Icelandic

Á is the second letter of the Icelandic alphabet and represents /au̯/ (as in "ow").

Portuguese

In Portuguese, á is used to mark a stressed /a/ 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 /a/ contrasts with â, pronounced /ɐ/.

Scottish Gaelic

Á was once used in Scottish, but has now been largely superseded by "à".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 or to avoid what would otherwise be homonyms, 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 and Acute accent for more details.

Vietnamese

In the Vietnamese alphabet, 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 nouns and borrowed words, for example, casáu [kaˈsaɨ, kaˈsai] "to hate", caniatáu [kanjaˈtaɨ, kanjaˈtai] "to allow", carafán [karaˈvan] "caravan".

Character mappings

See also

• Acute accent
• À