Diacriticals in Norwegian
From UniLang Wiki
Norwegian has three different diacriticals (accent marks).
- Acute accent (Norwegian "høyreaksent") ´
- Grave accent (Norwegian "gravistegn", "venstreaksent") `
- Circumflex (Norwegian "mønetegn", "sirkumfleks") ^
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Acute
- Used in some foreign proper names (of people and places), to mark stress in pronunciation.
- André, Linné, Bogotá
- In some loanwords ending with a stressed "e", to mark the main stress. In these cases the accent is not mandatory.
- allé, diaré, kafé, idé, entré, komité, kupé, moské, supé, trofé, diskré
- Even when the accent is used in the basic form, it is not mandatory in inflections.
- allé, alleen, alleer, alleene
- To distinguish the article "en" from the numeral "én".
- Det kom bare én tilskuer til fotballkampen.
grave
- Mandatory in some foreign names.
- Genève, Liège, Val-d’Isère, etc.
- To distinguish the adverb "òg" from the conjunction "og".
- Han òg ville være med.
- The preposition à (loanword from French)
- à jour (Not accented in compounds: ajourføre), à la carte, vis-à-vis, 2 kg à kr 9,50
circumflex
- Mandatory in some foreign names.
- Côte d’Azur, Rhône, etc.
- Can be used in some Norwegian words, but the use is never mandatory.
- fôr, fôre.
The "nonexistent" umlaut
The ¨ is not used in print, but is often used over "o" in handwriting, instead of a slash. Handwritten ö is an alternate form of the letter "ø".
