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Showing posts with label accents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accents. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

How to type foreign words with accents

 


I have trouble with words such as cafe and manana. Without the accent, they look wrong. 

Accent can mean intonation, or diacritical mark. The most common ones are :

The Acute Accent

más

 México

the circumflex, and 

the tilde.

The Tilde


 Ñ

mañana


Real Academia Española 

Simple System For Copying Correct Accents

My usual method is to find the word in google or  an online dictionary or Wikipedia and copy the whole word  or the accented letter. After you have copied it the first time, you can past it several times in the same article or post. Either continue using the control +v, or, if you have afterwards copied other letters, words, or pictures, search for the word with the accent in the article you are writing and copy it from your own article.

 tú

If you change to other words you are copying, then copy the letter with symbol again, this time from the first time you used it correctly in your own text.

As for remembering pronunciation, in French I think of the word for schoolchild, eleve, with the accents going up, acute, then down, grave.

élève




French words with accents

à la carte

château
If you copy a word in bold, and you are in blogger, just go to the character for inserting bold, the big capital letter B, and you will undo the bold of the word you have copied. If it comes out too large, look for the double TT sign which alters text size. if it comes out italic like this, click on the capital I sign which will be leaning forwards.. 


German accents

unlaut
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:German_alphabet
ÄäÄIPA(key): [ʔɛː]
Audio:Duration: 2 seconds.
ÖöÖIPA(key): [ʔøː]
Audio:Duration: 2 seconds.
ÜüÜIPA(key): [ʔyː]
Audio:Duration: 2 seconds.
ẞßEszett

Norwegian Bokmål 

Spanish words with accents

letter ⟨ñ⟩ in Spanish
Español
Real Academia Española 
mañana
Spanish uses only the acute accent over any vowel: ⟨á é í ó ú⟩. 

Useful Instructions on using foreign letters / accents

https://acuteaccents.com/how-to-type-accents-in-microsoft-word-6-methods/

For details on Spanish pronunciation, see Spanish phonology and Help:IPA/Spanish.

Useful lists of words

French

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_French_words_and_expressions_in_English

German

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:German_alphabet

Search systems

https://www.etymonline.com/word/a%20la%20carte

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Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Spanish Words - Fifty Handy Words For Welcoming, Chatting And Saying Goodbye



Spanish - English (memory aids in brackets) 

Español - Spanish

Inglaterra - England
Inglés - English
Británico - British

Accents simply tell you which syllable to emphasize.
1 ahora - now
2 bar - bar
3 clase - class
4 /5/6 cómo le va / 7/8 qué tal - how's it going 
9 ¿Cómo estás? how are you (upside down question mark starts sentences as well as ending them in Spanish)
19 dedo - finger

20 documentos - documents

21 /22/23 en la escuela - in school (add e before S like the word 

24 España for Spain and

Español  for Spanish 

25 26 27 en un momento - in a moment

28 29 espera aqui - wait here

espera un momento - wait a moment

30 la fiesta - the party

31 32 los insectos - insects

33 (la) invitación - (the) invitation

34 juguete - toy (juggling your toys)

35 36 ese libro - that book (like library)

37 28 39 mediodia - noon (media - middle, dia - day)

40 el oso - bear (Not el orso)

41 momento - moment

42 perdido - lost (perdition)

43 Siéntate - sit down

44 Siéntate aquí - sit here 

45 ven - come (as in the English words venture and adventure)

ven aqui - come here

46 47 48 ven conmigo - come with me (con - with, like Latin cum, mi - me)

You have learned, or already know, 48 words. Add

49 es - is / it is 

50 51 ¿Dónde está? Where is it?

52 Dónde están?- Where are they? (add n, like the m on the English word them for the plural)

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Thursday, August 7, 2025

Copying Spanish accents over letters in texts



The word accent in English is ambiguous. It can be local varitions or porunciation. Or the little dots above letters which indicate a change of sound, or emphasis. 

Spanish has two accents. The tilda or wavy line above tne letter n turns it into a ny sound.

The other accent is a diagonal going upwards towards the left. This shows the letter before is the syllable which you emphasize.

You can copy a word with accents from any source.

If you don't have the right word, copy any word contining the letter you want, then delete the letters before and after the letter you need.

Or the individual letters. 

 á, é, í, ó, ú, ü, ñ, ¿

That saves you searching for words which don't have accents.

Adios. - goodbye

Useful websites

https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/how-to-type-spanish-accents-and-letters

wikipedia

Accents - region spoken accents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Buying Laptops & Phones Overseas - To Gain Or Avoid Different Keyboards, Accents, Dollar & Money Signs

 If you want a Webster's Dictionary or a keyboard with dollar signs, the USA is a good place to buy them.


Dollar sign on Keyboards.

If you want A Japanese, Russian, Greek or Hebrew keyboard, those countries would have the biggest choice of keyboards already in their language.

You can swich your keybaord in settings, but how do you remember which key to press? You need to buy an overlay of the right keyboard. Or print one out, as a temporary measure. 

On my Samsung phone, I simply click on the key showing the globe, and up pops the Hebrew language I set when I was trying to learn Hebrew on Duolingo.

The Globe Symbol

Once, long after I had given up trying to learn Hebrew, I must have accidentally tapped on the globe key. Everything went into Hebrew and I had no idea why. I was in shock, in panic, in despair. Fortunately, my husband knew what the problem was. He just tapped on the globe symbol and magically my keyboard was back to normal.

Dollar and Pound Signs On Keyboards

$$$$$$$

 When buying a laptop overseas, or at home, note whether the keyboard has dollar signs or pound signs on the keyboard. America uses dollars. On my Dell keyboard, the dollar sign is above the number 4.

So does Singapore. In Singapore you add the capital leter S before the dollar sign, S$. 

To Change Keyboard Signs

If you are technically minded, you can go into settings and re-configure any key on your keyboard. We did this once when the key for full stop was stuck. We switched it with the colon which was rarely used. For several days I instinctively used the full stop key with no result. So we found that you need to print and stick on the new sign on the key.

Then one day we cleaned the keyboard with a blower. The Key must have been jammed by a microscopic piece of grit, or toast. We removed the sticker, then reconfigured the keyboard settings back to the way they were originally.

To Show Pound Signs On Laptop Keyboards

I have a Dell laptop which has dollar signs. To show pounds I can list them as GBP, as is done by some websites. I sometimes do that here in blogspot. You read my posts in blogspot where they are read-only and cannot be altered. I create posts in blogger with a passcode.

EDITING ON A PHONE

However, I can also use my Samsung phone which was bought in the UK. This has pound signs. So I can create posts on my phone with the pound signs. Alternatively, create posts on my laptop, then edit on my phone to insert the pound signs.

Keyboard Characters' Numbers 

If you have a separate numeric keyboard, you can type in the codes for certain characters which you use frequently. My husband has a list of those he uses a lot. But he knows off by heart the numbers he uses frequently. For example 0163 is the pound sign. For French and some other languages, the acute accent used frquently on the letter e is 0233.

The answers to most keyboard changes are found in your laptop manual online, or Youtube, or Quora, or Wikihow. AI nowadays often quotes wiki.

Another way to find out is to pop into a laptop or phone shop. Even if they don't sell your brand of laptop or phone, if they are not busy, some helpful extravert sales person will probably be happy to show you.

If you are stuck, and in a shopping mall, make for a McDonalds or Costa where a group of schoolchildren are doing homework on their laptops. You might not want to release your phone to somebody walking in the street, but a group stuck like sardines might be a safer bet.

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Thursday, February 13, 2025

Learning to read Croatian Place Names, Personal Names, Winery Names in New Zealand and Words

 

Sign from Soljans winery restaurant in New Zealand. 

Language Hints

The accents are easy to remember once you know. They are not for  emphasis (like French) but to tell you the sound and pronunciation. 

S with an accent becomes Sh. 

C with an accent becomes Ch. 

Z with an accent becomes j or dj or ge as in George.

Information from Kumeu river winery in New Zealand. 

Useful Websites

Slavic languages Wikitongues

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDsEIivsLesKcNHkB_ZcS2rlHKlHJhdTk

Friday, June 30, 2023

Pronunciation of foreign languages, accents and diacritics



French pupils are élèves

To remember the up and down accents on French words I look at the French word for pupil, secondary school pupil eleve.

Look at the up and down accents.

élève

The first upward accent makes the sound ay as in hay. The second downward accent makes the sound ev as in every. You automatically raise your voice slightly when saying ay. You automatically make a lower sound on the ev sound.

The cedilla or tail under the c turns the c into an s sound. Think of the words palace, pencil, police in English.



English and the Magic E - for kings George V and George VI

People learning English complain that they don't know when a c has a hard sound like K. The secret is that in English an e after g makes the g soft. Age. Page. Rage. Sage. Percentage.

In the name George, the g is twice followed by an e which changed the hard g into a soft J sound.


Garage

The first g is hard. The second g is oft because the e is added to tell you so. GE=J

 Useful Websites

To find a foreign place name or any word, pronounced by male and female speakers with different accents from each country and region (you get several options) try forvo.

I used it for Italian and Albanian.

Useful Websites 

forvo

Also if you are teaching English and want people to pronounce words the English way

https://es.forvo.com/languages/es/