2

I was discovering lately that the only French word using "ù" was the only word "où" which means "where".

On the french layout keyboard (aka AZERTY), there's a key only dedicated to this "ù".

We were wondering if there are any other languages that is using the character: "ù".

Sir Cornflakes
  • 30,154
  • 3
  • 65
  • 128
Stephane Rolland
  • 652
  • 6
  • 18
  • 3
    Wikipedia has some discussion of the accent in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_accent It looks like ù is used in Italian. – brass tacks Sep 02 '15 at 00:22
  • 3
    Grave accents are often used to refer to tones in tone languages. Depending on the tone system, they are frequently used for a falling tone in a system, just as an acute accent is used for a rising tone . Like the Pinyin representation of 'hemp' for the second (rising) tone, and 'scold' for the fourth (falling) tone. – jlawler Sep 02 '15 at 13:27
  • 1
    Vietnamese. There are "tons" of diacritics in Vietnamese – Lưu Vĩnh Phúc Sep 14 '15 at 16:36
  • 1
    in such case chinese pinyin also have ù... like "bù" that means "not" – Stephane Rolland Sep 14 '15 at 21:00

2 Answers2

6

In Vietnamese there are 6 tones and the grave accent is used to indicate the falling tone. "ù" itself means "fat". But the tone is applied to every syllable in Vietnamese, hence any vowels can have the grave accent on them. For example à, ằ, ầ, è, ề, ì, ò, ồ, ờ, ù, ừ, ỳ...

You can also see that in Hanyu Pinyin like yùnmǔ (韻母)

I'd assume it's also common in other tonal languages which use Latin script and diacritics for indicating tone


Some other non-tonal languages that also use ù

In Ligurian, the grave accent marks the accented short vowel of a word in à (sound [a]), è (sound [ɛ]), ì (sound [i]) and ù (sound [y]).

In Scottish Gaelic, it denotes a long vowel, such as cùis [kʰuːʃ] ("subject"), compared with cuir [kʰuɾʲ] ("put"). The use of acute accents to denote the rarer close long vowels, leaving the grave accents for the open long ones, is seen in older texts, but it is no longer allowed according to the new orthographical conventions.

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

Lưu Vĩnh Phúc
  • 794
  • 7
  • 16
4

Yes, in Italian: the word "più", for example.

user10458
  • 110
  • 3