Written by Peder B. Helland
Accent aigu is simply the accent that looks like this: ´. Examples of this are: é, á and ó. Let's see how they are used in Norwegian.
In Norwegian, the main uses of the accent aigu are in names and some loanwords. The reason we use the accent aigu, is to show which part of the word that is stressed. This affects how you pronounce the Norwegian word.
An example of this is armen and arméen (the army). In the first example, the first syllable is stressed. In the second example, the last syllable is stressed.
In your study of the Norwegian language, you might have come across words like idé, komité, kafé and so forth. You might also have read ide, komite and kafe in the same text or in another text. Do these words mean the same? Do they have the same pronunciation?
Yes. They mean exactly the same thing and the pronunciation is identical. The reason that some people write idé and some people write ide is that it's optional to use the accent for loanwords.
You can therefore either write: en idé - idéen - idéer - idéene or en ide - ideen - ideer - ideene.
Other examples of Norwegian words like that are: distré and allé.
In Norwegian, you often come across én and en. **Én **means one and **en **means a/an.