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

Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> 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.
It's not so simple.  Italian, like Catalan, mostly keeps to the "old
rules": the grave on low vowels, the acute on high ones.  So a has
only the grave, i and u only the acute, and e and o can have either,
depending on whether they are [e] and [o] (acute) or [E] and [O] (grave).
However, it's very common nowadays to use the grave instead of the acute
on i and u.  The only absolutely required accents in Italian are on
final stressed vowels and on certain monosyllables as a disambiguator
(as in Spanish).  It's also common to use a sort of breve in handwriting.

French has the remnants of this system, except that it has u-grave in
the one word "ou`" to distinguish it from "ou".

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