Modifier Letter Acute Accent

It marks pitch; the notation system tells you which value. Zhuyin uses it for Mandarin’s rising second tone; older International Phonetic Alphabet spacing notation uses it for rising pitch. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system for writing speech sounds, and the mark alone does not identify which system is in use.

Its acute shape has a recognizable ancestor in ancient Greek accent notation, where marks guided melodic pitch around 200 BCE. The traditional attribution to Aristophanes is uncertain because its support rests on later evidence. Phonetic writers later reused acute-shaped marks: Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao proposed pitch notation in 1930, and the International Phonetic Association revised its tone conventions at the Kiel Convention in 1989.

what is ˊ in zhuyin?

In Zhuyin, it marks Mandarin’s rising second tone. Zhuyin, also called Bopomofo, spells Mandarin syllables with symbols for the beginning sound and vowel part. Its tone mark goes at the upper-right of the final Zhuyin symbol; that position belongs to the spelling system, not to a Latin vowel.

The system was created in 1913 and released in 1918 to represent a syllable’s beginning sound, vowel part, and tone. It became a tool for pronunciation teaching, dictionaries, books, and phonetic typing.

why won't ˊ sit on my letter?

It has its own character position instead of attaching to a letter. That makes it a spacing modifier; a combining acute attaches to a preceding letter. Software can handle the two differently in line breaks or double-click selection, so a separated mark is not always a display error. In HTML/XML source, enter ˊ or ˊ.