É
É, é (e-acute) is a letter of the Latin alphabet. It is found in Afrikaans, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Emilian-Romagnol, French, English, Galician, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Occitan, Navajo, Norwegian, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Vietnamese, and Welsh languages, as a variant of the letter "e". In English, it may be observed as a pronunciation aid in loanwords in highly formal writing (e.g., résumé from French) or romanizations (e.g., Pokémon from Japanese) but not usually in casual writing or even in some formal writing types. This is also the case in the Dutch and Navajo languages.
É or é is also used for /ɤ/ with a rising tone ([ɤ̌]) in Pinyin, a romanization system for Standard Chinese. It is also used in Indonesian dictionaries to denote /e/, in contrast with E, e /ə/.
Usage in various languages
Czech and Slovak
É is the 9th letter of the Czech alphabet and Slovak alphabet and represents /ɛː/.
Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish
In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, the letter "é" is used to indicate that a terminal syllable with the vowel e is stressed, and it is often used only when it changes the meaning. See Acute accent for a more detailed description. In addition, Danish uses é in some loanwords to represent /i/.
Dutch
Like in English, é is respected when writing foreign words, mainly from French. It is also used to differentiate the article "een," equivalent to either "a" or "an" in English, and "één", the number one. It is also used to add visual stress on words in the same way English might use italics. In Dutch, some people use "hé" as a greeting, like "hey" or "hi".
Emilian-Romagnol
In Emilian, é is used to represent [e], e.g. récc [rekː] "rich". In Romagnol the same letter is used to represent [eː], e.g. lédar [ˈleːdar] "thieves".
English
In English, the e-acute has some uses, mostly in words of French origin, such as née, résumé, fiancée, sauté and coupé and names such as Beyoncé, Breneé, JonBenét, and Théo. Pokémon, the media franchise owned by Japanese corporation Nintendo, uses [k]é to signify the proper pronunciation of the katakana ケ.
French
The letter é (pronounced /e/) contrasts with è (which is pronounced /ɛ/) and is widely used in French.
Hungarian
É is the 10th letter of the Hungarian alphabet and represents /eː/.
Icelandic
É is the 7th letter of the Icelandic alphabet and represents /jɛː/.
Irish
In Irish the acute accent (fada) marks a long vowel and so é is pronounced /eː/.
Italian
É is a variant of E carrying an acute accent; it represents an /e/ carrying the tonic accent. It is used only if it is the last letter of the word except in dictionaries or when a different pronunciation may affect the meaning of a word: perché ("why"/"because", pronounced [perˈke]) and pésca ("fishing", [ˈpeska]), to be compared with caffè ("coffee", [kafˈfɛ]) and pèsca ("peach", [ˈpɛska]), which have a grave accent.
Kashubian
É is the 8th letter of the Kashubian alphabet and represents /ɛ/. It also represents [ej] in some dialects and represents [i]/[ɨ] in area between Puck and Kartuzy.
Portuguese
In Portuguese, é is used to mark a stressed /ɛ/ in words whose stressed syllable is in unpredictable within the word, as in "péssimo" (very bad). If the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, the acute accent is not used. É /ɛ/ contrasts with ê, /e/. "É" can also mean "is": ela é bonita (she is pretty).
Spanish
In Spanish, é is an accented letter and is pronounced just like "e" /e/. The accent indicates the stressed syllable in words with irregular stress, as in "éxtasis" or "bebé". See Diacritic and Acute accent for more details.
Scottish Gaelic
É was once used in Scottish Gaelic, but has now been largely superseded by "è". It can still be seen, but it is no longer used in the standard orthography.
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, often found on e in borrowed words: personél [pɛrsɔˈnɛl] "personnel", sigarét [sɪɡaˈrɛt] "cigarette", ymbarél [əmbaˈrɛl] "umbrella".
Vietnamese
In Vietnamese, the letter "é" indicates the rising tone. It can also be combined with "ê" to form "ế".
Yoruba
e with a Mí High with a rising tone, depicted by an acute accent The pronunciation of words in Yorùbá language is tonal; where a different pitch conveys a different word meaning or grammatical distinction.
This means that pronouncing words in Yorùbá is based on what is called Àmì ohùn – Tone Marks. These marks are applied to the top of the vowel within each syllable of a word or phrase.
There are three types of tone marks namely:
Dò Low with a falling tone, depicted by a grave accent Re Mid with a flat tone, depicted by an absence of any accent Mí High with a rising tone, depicted by an acute accent Understanding the use of tone marks is key to properly reading, writing and speaking the Yorùbá language. This is because some words have similar spellings but at the addition of tone marks, these words could have very different meanings.
Character mappings
| Preview | É | é | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH ACUTE | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 201 | U+00C9 | 233 | U+00E9 |
| UTF-8 | 195 137 | C3 89 | 195 169 | C3 A9 |
| Numeric character reference | É | É | é | é |
| Named character reference | É | é | ||
| ISO 8859-1/2/3/4/9/10/13/14/15/16 | 201 | C9 | 233 | E9 |
| Mac OS Roman | 131 | 83 | 142 | 8E |
Key strokes
- Microsoft Windows users can type an "é" by pressing Alt+130 or Alt+0233 on the numeric pad of the keyboard. "É" can be typed by pressing Alt+144 or Alt+0201.
- On US International and UK English keyboard layouts, users can type the acute accent letter "é" by typing AltGR+E.
- This method can also be applied to many other acute accented letters which do not appear on the standard US English keyboard layout.
- In Microsoft Word, users can press Ctrl+' (apostrophe), then E or ⇧ Shift+E for "é" or "É".
- On macOS, users can press ⌥ Option+E, then E or ⇧ Shift+E for "é" or "É".
- Using a compose key, users can hold Compose and press ' (apostrophe) E for "é" or Compose ' (apostrophe) ⇧ Shift+E for "É".
- On a standard Android, Windows Mobile, or iOS keyboard, users can hold the E key until special characters appear, slide to the é, and release.