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The claim that “English doesn’t use accents” is, quite frankly, a bit naïve. After all, one only needs to step into a café for a crème brûlée, or to read a nove
by nelox 1y ago
The claim that “English doesn’t use accents” is, quite frankly, a bit naïve. After all, one only needs to step into a café for a crème brûlée, or to read a novel featuring a tête-à-tête, to see that English is perfectly comfortable with accented words. From the résumé of a job seeker to the façade of a building, from the attaché case of a businessman to the naïve assumptions of a newcomer, accents are sprinkled throughout our language like so many éclairs in a patisserie. English may not have been born with diacritics, but it has certainly acquired a taste for them.
- pif 1y agoIf only you had written an example that is not a French word! You have actually reinforced the thesis you were trying to dispute: English does not use accents.
- shakow 1y ago> perfectly comfortable Seeing that virtually none of these are pronounced as they are in the original, I would say that English keeps them out of respect for their source language, but is definitely not comfortable with them.
- Twirrim 1y agoIn almost every example you state, we've taken the word and the pronunciation, but have dropped the accent marks themselves. It's part of what makes English pronunciation a minefield.
- speff 1y agoIf I recall correctly, the accent marks only started to get dropped when people began using keyboards. Resumé and fiancée still got an accent when it was handwritten