Why English doesn't use accents

Historical and technological influences on English spelling

• Several comments trace loss/changes of letters (þ, ð, æ, ſ) to printing economics and fragility of type, not just the invention of movable type itself.
• Early typewriters and later ASCII favored overstriking and digraphs over new glyphs; some ASCII choices (e.g., ^, ~) come from that history.
• English orthography largely “froze” around Early Modern English; dialects have drifted since, making reform hard because no unified spoken target exists.

Diacritics vs digraphs: different design choices

• The article’s claim: French solved “extra sounds” with diacritics; English (under Norman influence) solved them with extra letters and digraphs (sh, th, oo, ee, ou).
• Some argue English could have adopted accents but didn’t need to once digraph conventions emerged and became “good enough.”
• Others note that diacritics themselves are not universal or unambiguous: the same mark (e.g., ä, ā) means different sounds in different languages.

Cross-language pronunciation and orthography comparisons

• Long subthreads compare English to French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Finnish, Serbian, Chinese, Korean, etc.
• General pattern:
  • “Shallow” orthographies (Spanish, Finnish, Serbian, Korean Hangul) make pronunciation highly predictable.
  • English and French have deep, historical spellings; you often must already know the word.
• Debate over whether French is better or worse than English; many conclude both are bad in different ways.
• Example-heavy critiques of English irregularities (ough cluster, read/read, draught, laughter/slaughter) and French silent letters and homophones.

English as global lingua franca and its properties

• One line of argument: English spreads mainly for historical/economic reasons (empire, US power), not because it is inherently “better.”
• Another: English’s tolerance of heavy accent and its flexible, rule-bending nature make it resilient and usable as a “glue” language across cultures.
• Pushback against the trope that English has “no rules”; linguists point to many subtle but robust patterns (stress, adjective order, sound alternations).

Current use of accents and diacritics in English

• English does use diacritics in limited ways:
  • Diaeresis in naïve, coöperate, Noël, Zoë, especially in some publications.
  • Grave or acute accents in poetic forms (cursèd, learnèd) to force extra syllables.
  • Loanwords retaining accents: façade, jalapeño, cliché, fiancée, résumé.
• There’s disagreement on how “proper” or necessary these are; many writers omit them without confusion.