t-r-e-s, non t-r-è-s! how you write zee accent?

August 21, 2011 12:40 PM

When native speakers of languages with accent marks write, is it usual to write out a word or sentence and then put in the accents or does one put the accent in when writing the actual letter.

In other words, using French as an example, would the native speaker write;
t-r-e-s   i-n-t-e-r-e-s-s-a-n-t
*and then go back and correct*
t-r-è-s   i-n-t-é-r-e-s-s-a-n-t

or would it most likely be written;
t-r-è-s   i-n-t-é-r-e-s-s-a-n-t ?

Obviously cursive it almost HAS to be 1, but what about writing regular block letters. I realize this could be the dumbest Ask Metafilter linguistics question in history, but all of a sudden I am really curious.

So höw ãbóŭt it?

posted by xetere to writing & language (18 answers total)

I put the accents in when I write the letter. I am not a native speaker.
posted by bq at 12:44 PM on August 21, 2011

Regular block letters? They write the accent at the same time, just like people cross a t and dot an i as they write those letters.
posted by studioaudience at 12:45 PM on August 21, 2011

In Brazilian Portuguese, when you're learning how to write, it's taught that the correct technique is to put the accent after finishing writing the whole word (not phrase, as in your first example), supposedly for speed and "better" cursive aesthetic. But actually, people develop their own particular techniques of writing and change them thought theirs lives, from what I observed.
posted by TheGoodBlood at 12:48 PM on August 21, 2011

My college French professor, who was a native speaker, would laugh at me when I wrote out tres interessant without the accents, and then go back and mark the accents.

I infer from that that at least she wrote the accents as she wrote the words.
posted by dfriedman at 12:48 PM on August 21, 2011

I (native French speaker) just wrote "très intéressant" in cursive to see what feels most natural, and I write the whole letter, with accent, in once pass. Then again, maybe that's why my cursive sucks.
posted by OLechat at 12:51 PM on August 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

When my German teacher, who is a native speaker, writes things out on the board, she either writes the umlauts as part of the letter (same as dotting an i) or after she's finished writing the word, but she never waits until she's finished an entire sentence.
posted by colfax at 12:59 PM on August 21, 2011

I've been studying Spanish (off-and-on) for the better part of 15 years. In that time, I have had two native speakers as teachers, both of whom wrote in cursive exclusively. They wrote a single word, and added the accent before moving on to the next, e.g.: dia (without dot on the i) turned to día. I don't recall ever seeing them write anything in block, so I can't tell you how they would have written accents.

Non-native teachers wrote in both cursive and block, and all 4 of them also wrote the accent after each word. I do the same when writing my own Spanish.
posted by asciident at 1:03 PM on August 21, 2011

Native speaker of Icelandic, which has plenty of accents. I write longhand every day and usually put the accent in as I write the letter, but I sometimes do it after I've written the whole word. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when I do one or the other.
posted by Kattullus at 1:03 PM on August 21, 2011

native spanish speaker - I write out the word and then add the accents. I do this both for block and cursive. I don't remember ever doing it any other way - so I wasn't corrected for any "bad" habits in elementary school, for example.
posted by alchemist at 1:07 PM on August 21, 2011

Russian has two letters with diacritics — ё and й.

The dots over ё are often omitted, both in writing and in print.

The breve over й is never omitted. Since most handwritten Russian is written in cursive, most people go back for the breve once they've finished writing the entire word.

There are also a couple of accent marks that only pop up in handwritten cursive Russian. Written quickly, cursive т and ш (and и) are barely distinguishable, so a good number of people put a dash over the т and under the ш.
posted by Nomyte at 1:11 PM on August 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Based on personal mothertongue/fluency: German umlauts always with each letter; French accents can sometimes come as a word-finisher, unless their letters are early on in a word, in which case I'd complete the letter with its accent; Italian accents are almost all on the last letters of words, so you write them to finish off word and letter at the same time, as it were.

As an aside: computer usage, where (often) you set the umlaut/accent and then add the letter under it, feels reinforceative of the accent as letter-linked.
posted by progosk at 1:36 PM on August 21, 2011

Note that while in romance languages it is usually considered a letter with an accent, e.g. French é, in many other languages you are actually dealing with a separate letter that receives separate alphabetization, e.g. Swedish å ä and ö.

My personal experience with advanced French (through college level) is that I would write the accent at the same time, but I never developed anything like a breezy, casual cursive style, either -- it would have been mostly homework.
posted by dhartung at 1:49 PM on August 21, 2011

(Also: I have a feeling that i-dotting and t-crossing habits in cursive might also be similarly less-than-entirely-standardised, even in English.)
posted by progosk at 1:51 PM on August 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wouldn't this be exactly the same as crossing t's or dotting i's? (ie. most people would do it when finishing the word if writing in cursive, or as they write each letter while printing/block letters; and that some people would have some other idiosyncratic way of doing it that isn't typical?)
posted by Kololo at 2:22 PM on August 21, 2011

I vote for doing it after you finish the word. It's how I dot "i" and cross "t" and it's how I put the lines under ш and over т and й in Russian. Only "extra marks" that can be done without breaking the stroke are put in as you write the word. And I'd forget some of them if I waited till the end of the phrase (it would also set off my subclinical OCD tendencies, having all those uncrossed "t" and undotted "i" characters staring at me, throwing off my concentration.)

An example of what I mean by an "extra mark" that's can be done without breaking the stroke when writing in cursive are the little hooks on the bottom of ц and щ (examples here.) I don't think there's a good equivalent in English cursive.

Russians (at least the ones I've met) basically always use cursive, so.
posted by SMPA at 2:42 PM on August 21, 2011

Native speaker of French: it depends. In "Très intéressant", I start by writing "Tres" then add the accent. But I stop after "inte", add the accent, and go on with the rest of the word. My handwriting is awful.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:10 PM on August 21, 2011

I write in a cursive-print mashup, with occasional backwards strokes and flourishes, and I put in French accents as I go. I am also ADHD and easily distracted.
posted by maudlin at 4:04 PM on August 21, 2011

Although I am American I went to French schools from the age of 4 to 18. I can still do the ornate penmanship style they taught us (with a pen dipped in an inkwell!) and yes, I do put the accent as soon as I write the letter.
posted by mareli at 6:29 PM on August 21, 2011