OT: Diacricital marks [Re: Question about "do"]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 12:19:40PM -0500, Carlos Thompson wrote:
> <`> is not used in Spanish, so it does not have a "common" name.
Yeah, I know.  But it's not used in English, either, which doesn't keep
us from talking about it. :)

> Technically: a grave accent sign: "signo de acento grave", or just "un
> grave" or "un acento grave", for example in a lesson on French.
> Some common names: "tilde alrevés", "rayita alrevés" or things like those.
> There are a few diferences betwen the LA and the ES layouts, the most
> notorious, the Spanish has the grave key where the LA has the acute.
¡Ay!

> The result: tons of documents written with graves instead
> of acutes.
Which, as you say, doesn't affect anything since Spanish only has
one accent mark (plus the tilde for ñ and diaresis for gü).  It
sure looks funny with graves to me, though: «¿Còmo estàs?»
«¿Què haces esta noche?»    Looks like Italiañol.

Speaking of which: am I correct in thinking that Italian only has
the grave accent?  I know French has both (plus circumflex); but I
seem to recall that Italian has only the grave.

-Mark

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