SPELLING: MORE ABOUT ACCENTUATION AND DIERESIS

1.  Diacritic accentuation refers to word pairs that are distinguished just for the nature of their stressed vowels, i.e., whether it is either open or closed. Some of these pairs

bé, béns	well; richness	be, bens	lamb, letter ‘b’
déu	god	deu, deus	ten; (s)he must/owes
dóna, dónes	he gives, you give	dona, dones	woman
és	you are	es	himself, herself, itself
fóra	he were	fora	out, outside
mà	hand	ma	my (poss sg. fem.)
més	more	mes	month; my (plural)
món	world	mon	my (poss. sg. masc.)
nét, néta	grandson/daughter	net, neta	clean
ós, óssos	bear	os, ossos	bone
pèl, pèls	hair	pel, pels	for the, by the
què	what? which (relative)	que	that (conjunction, relative)
sé	I know	se	himself, herself, itself
sí	yes	si	if, whether
sóc	I am	soc	stump; log; souk
són	they are	son	sleeping; possessive
té	he has	te	tea; letter ‘t’, you (clitic)
ús	use, usage	us	you (clitic)
véns, vénen	you come	vens, venen	you sell
vós	you (formal)	vos	you (clitic)

2. Furthermore, dieresis (¨) is combined with accentuation. Dieresis is placed on <ï> and <ü> and mainly marks two vowels not forming a diphthong:

ensaïmada	typical sweet from Mallorca
llaüt	lute
agraït	thankful; thanked
continuï	that it continues (subjunctive)
obeïes	you obeyed (imperfect tense)

  

3. When a cluster of two vowels cannot be accented, dieresis is used. Observe the following example applied to veí (= neighbour):

– with accent: veí

– with dieresis: veïna, veïns, veïnes.