It should always be the second vowel in English I think. There are 3 accents that see use in native English: * the diaeresis (äëïöüÿ) or trema (in French infl

It should always be the second vowel in English I think. There are 3 accents that see use in native English: * the diaeresis (äëïöüÿ) or trema (in French influence), indicates that a vowel that should start its own syllable (that is, turning 1 syllable into 2, thus the name), not be a diphthong. Nowadays usually a hyphen is used instead, or (especially in American English) removed entirely for words that have become common. Most commonly this is 'oö' or 'eë', but others exist e.g. "naïve". This is not to be confused with the German umlaut, which does something completely different and is not productive in English. * the acute (áéíóúý) indicates an alternate pronunciation (or occasionally stress) of the vowel compared to the usual rules (especially if there's a homonym); there is no consistency in what that alternate is (since many English vowels have 3 or more pronunciations). Sometimes this can create a syllable where there was none, but normally it leaves the syllable count unchanged. The usual example is "résumé"; most other examples are for words derived from French where French had it, but it gets used for other languages that didn't have one too ("saké" and "Pokémon" from Japanese, "maté" via Spanish). I can't think of examples in "native" words (barring trademarks, but I don't think any of those have genericized), but if you go back far enough, aren't they all loanwords? Certainly many of the words that this applies to aren't very foreign anymore. * the grave (àèìòùỳ) is used in poetry to force an extra syllable that would not be used in prose. By far this is most commonly for a past participle like "blessèd", but the rule is productive and can be used on any vowel. "Learnèd" is a weird example where the pronunciation changes even in prose (for the adjective sense), but the accent is usually only in poetry still.