Akcentowane

Akcentowane is a Polish adjective derived from the verb akcentować, meaning to emphasize or mark an accent. The term is used in several contexts to describe things that carry an accent or emphasis, such as sounds, syllables, or written characters.

In linguistics, akcentowana sylaba denotes the syllable that bears the stress. Polish prosody generally places stress on the penultimate syllable, but certain words or inflected forms feature akcentowana syllables on other positions. The concept helps describe pronunciation patterns and phonological emphasis in analysis and teaching.

In orthography and typography, akcentowane litery are letters with diacritical marks (for example ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż in Polish). Diacritics indicate distinct phonemes and aid readability. The broader idea of an akcent (accent) is connected to diacritical signs across languages, where marks such as acute, grave, or umlaut modify pronunciation or distinguish words.

In computing and data processing, akcentowane characters relate to extended character sets and Unicode. Practices such as deakcentowanie (removing diacritics) are common when converting text to ASCII for compatibility or search indexing.

Etymology: the term comes from Polish akcentować, itself borrowed from French accentuer or Latin accentus, reflecting the cross-linguistic notion of marking emphasis in speech or writing.