Elegant little buggers, accents; aren't they? Delicate little black berets in suspension over a vowel, slightly tipped either to the left or to the right. Consider the French for 'she buys': 'elle achète,' positioned over the first 'e' to change the sound of the vowel from a long 'a' as in 'ate' to 'eh.' Pretty cool, eh? Or just look at how sophisticated and sassy the Italian word for coffee becomes with a grave accent: 'caffè,'--especially with that sexy double-f. Here the accent is employed to indicate that this is a word that breaks the normal stress in Italian on the penultimate syllable. We want to pronounce this word 'Caf-FEH.' Is it not amazing how such miniscule marks act as gentle guides in the harrowing task of reproducing the wondrous sounds of a language?
I even enjoy writing them. There's something sort of defiant about topping off an 'e' with a grave accent--sort of a Now there! sense of completion. One misses out on that metaphysical gesture when she types it. No, one needs a pen; preferably one with a bold flow of jet-black ink.
Second best is the circumflex: not understated tilted berets, but more like those pointy straw hats you see Vietnamese women wearing as they stoop over to pluck stalks of rice from the paddies. The French phrase for 'beside' goes all out, festooned in all sorts of orthographical regalia: 'à côté de.' How extravagant! How baroque!
Still feeling gravely stressed? Having an acute anxiety attack? Accents to the rescue!
Jusqu'à demain.
Why do you suppose English has no accents, and virtually no diacritical marks of any kind? After all, it's a language which is unpronounceable if you don't get the accent on the right syllable. To the best of my knowledge, written accents do not appear in early English texts (do they in French?).
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