The grave accent ( ` ) (
/ˈɡreɪv/ or UK /ˈɡrɑːv/) is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek (until 1982; see polytonic orthography), Italian, Macedonian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Ligurian, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.
The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek to mark a lower pitch than the high pitch of the acute accent. In modern practice, it is used to replace an acute accent in the last syllable of a word when the word is followed immediately by another word in the sentence.
Originally, however, the grave marked any syllable that was not marked with an acute or circumflex. This practice was soon given up for the less laborious one of marking only the last syllable.
Since Modern Greek has a stress accent instead of a pitch accent, both the grave and circumflex have been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.
The grave accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in Catalan and Italian.
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