How did Tolkien use accents in his languages?

Hey y'all!!

Can someone explain to me how Tolkien intended the accents to be used? I took some French classes, and from what I can tell, le tréma --sorry, DIERESIS :) and grave accents are used in the same way, but circumflexes and acute accents are used differently?

By the way, for anyone who doesn't know--dieresis = Ë; grave accent = È; circumflex = Ê; acute accent = É

Sorry if I missed any!! Although I'm pretty sure Tolkien didn't use la cedille :)

Hello,

in short:

• acute accent é: indicates that the vowel is long

• macron ē: indicates that the vowel is long (used in ancient, primitive languages like Common Eldarin)

• circumflex ê: indicates that the vowel is long or extra long (in Sindarin)

• dieresis ë: indicates that the vowel is pronounced (at the end of a word), or is pronounced separately and not as part of a diphthong

I don't recall having seen the grave accent being used by Tolkien, but I may be mistaken.

Thank you, that makes sense now!! Yeah, I realized after that there aren't any grave accents in Tolkien's languages..😝

This is such a commonly asked question that I've decided to sticky it! Thank you!

As the post has been stickied I have edited my response to include actual examples of the diacritics.

And just adding my own two cents, it makes sense that Tolkien doesn't use the cedille in his elvish languages because the letter 'c' is always pronounced like a 'k', so there's no need to :)