accent

Mark (´, ˇ, ˆ) used to indicate stress on a particular syllable or a difference in the pronunciation of a letter. English does not use accents, except in some words of foreign origin such as ‘cliché’, ‘café’, and ‘fête’.

In classical Greek there were three: the acute accent (´), the grave accent (`), and the circumflex (ˆ). There are now a number of other accents. Examples are the háček (ˇ) used in Slavonic languages, and the macron (¯) used to indicate a long vowel in transcriptions of, for example, Sanskrit and Japanese (as in ‘Mahāyāna’, ‘Nō’). Accents can be used to indicate stress, length, or other aspects of pronunciation.