If it was just some additional characters like ñ (which is considered a letter of its own, not an accented n) then it wouldn't be a big deal – but e and é are t

If it was just some additional characters like ñ (which is considered a letter of its own, not an accented n) then it wouldn't be a big deal – but e and é are the same letter with different accents, which adds some subtlety that English simply doesn't have. Given a small enough number of accented characters you can punt on that, call them each a character, but English is objectively simpler since the only real distinction it has between letters is caps or not-caps. (I was just watching the Mother Of All Demos, though, and everything was in caps but they put an overline over capital letters. So even normal English lettering was too complicated for a while.)