> Surely it's my American perspective speaking, but accented letters are, to me, devoid of information and I can't help but interpret them as noise rather than

> Surely it's my American perspective speaking, but accented letters are, to me, devoid of information and I can't help but interpret them as noise rather than signal. As a francophone the difference between "e" and "é" _cannot_ be ignored - and their pronunciation is also different. Likewise, accents are signal in Spanish. However, when reading romanized Japanese I also dislike the use of accents, mostly from a lack of norm indicating which accent corresponds to which pronunciation.