What is that?

Just like Japanese, English also borrows
a lot of words from other languages (French in particular). The problem is that it is difficult to spell these words in English so we need to use ACCENT MARKS to show us how to pronounce them correctly.

The first one we will look at is the ACUTE

which looks like this

é

(a small mark above the letter

from bottom left to top right).

Some examples are the words

café, fiancé, passé, sauté, and touché.

Notice that the acute accent tells you

to pronounce the letter E at the end of the word

and not to read it as a MAGIC E

that would change the sound of the previous vowel

(and therefore have no sound itself).

What does that mean?

Well caf would sound like kɑ:f or kæf.

But cafe (with a magic E) would sound like keɪf

and café would be kɑ:fe

An acute accent mark can be used

over many other letters as well, not just the letter E.

This is just one example of how it is used.