A with Accent: Pick á, à, â, ã, ä, å or ā for Your Language
Which a with accent you need depends on the language: Spanish writes á, French à and â, Portuguese á, â, ã and à, German ä, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish å, and Latvian ā. Tap a letter below to copy it. On a Mac, Option+E then A types á; on a phone, touch and hold A.
How do you type á on a keyboard or phone?
On a Mac, á is Option+E, then A; on Windows it is Alt+0225. Each row below gives the documented method for one device or app, phones included; the vendor help pages they come from are linked under the table.
| Device or app | Keys |
|---|---|
| Mac | Option+E, then A How to type accents on a Mac |
| Windows | Alt+0225 How to type accents on Windows |
| Windows, US-International | AltGr+A |
| iPhone, iPad | Touch and hold A, then slide to á |
| Android | Touch and hold A, then slide to á |
| Chromebook | Switch to the US International keyboard, then ', then A How to type accents on a Chromebook |
| Microsoft Word | Ctrl+', then A How to type accents in Word |
| Google Docs | Insert, then Symbols, then Special characters, then search "latin small letter a with acute" How to type accents in Google Docs |
Sources:Mac (Apple) (opens in a new tab)Windows (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)Windows, US-International (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)iPhone, iPad (Apple) (opens in a new tab)Android (Google) (opens in a new tab)Chromebook (Google) (opens in a new tab)Microsoft Word (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)Google Docs (Google) (opens in a new tab)
- á a with acute · used in 23 languages
- à a with grave · used in 22 languages
- â a with circumflex · used in 11 languages
- ä a with diaeresis · used in 12 languages
- ã a with tilde · used in 6 languages
- å a with ring above · used in 6 languages
- ā a with macron · used in 4 languages
What are all the a letters with accents?
Every a with an accent mark on AccentPad, lowercase then capitals. Tap one to copy it:
Which a with accent does each language use?
To pick the right a with an accent mark, start from the language, not from the shape of the mark. Each language writes only some of the accented a's, and the Unicode CLDR alphabets behind AccentPad's facts list which ones. Find your language in the left column. The middle column gives real words and places that use those letters, from the FrequencyWords subtitle lists and the GeoNames list of cities.
| If you write | Use | Seen in | First keys on a Mac |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | á | está, más, mamá; Bogotá (Colombia), Culiacán (Mexico) | Option+E, then A |
| Portuguese | á â ã à | já, câmara, não, às; São Paulo (Brazil) | see the Portuguese section below |
| French | à â | déjà, voilà; âge, gâteau | Option and the backtick key, then A; Option+I, then A |
| Italian | à | già, città, verità | Option and the backtick key, then A |
| German | ä | wäre, hätte, später | Option+U, then A |
| Swedish | à ä å | Västerås, Gävle, Umeå (Sweden) | Option+A for å |
| Finnish | ä å | Jyväskylä, Hämeenlinna (Finland) | Option+U, then A |
| Estonian | ä | Lasnamäe, Mustamäe (Estonia) | Option+U, then A |
| Danish | å | Århus (Denmark) | Option+A |
| Norwegian | à å | Ålesund, Åsane (Norway) | Option+A for å |
| Vietnamese | á à â ã | Hà Tĩnh, Cà Mau, Gia Lâm (Vietnam) | Option+E, then A, for á |
| Latvian, Māori, Tongan | ā | Jānis, Kārlis (Wikidata given names) | press and hold A, then choose ā |
| Hungarian, Czech, Icelandic, Irish | á | Zoltán, Václav, Ciarán (Wikidata given names) | Option+E, then A |
| Romanian | â | Option+I, then A |
The table splits the languages into easy and hard cases. The only a with accent Spanish uses is á, the a acute, and Italian needs only à, so a single shortcut covers each of them. Portuguese and Vietnamese each need several, and the wrong one is a spelling mistake.
The ä belongs to German, Swedish, Finnish and Estonian, and it gets a page of its own, a with umlaut. Here it matters because Swedish and Finnish file it at the end of the alphabet, which the next section covers. The å of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish has its own page too, a with circle: its o sound, the old aa spelling and the Ångström sign.
Does a sorted list file å and ä under a?
A sorted list files å and ä under a only in some languages. Unicode's CLDR collation charts set out the alphabetical order for each language, and in Swedish, Finnish and Danish they move å and ä past z, while á, à and â stay with plain a.
| Sorted in | á à â ã ā | å | ä |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | with a, before b | with a, before b | with a, before b |
| Latvian | ā right after a, before b | ||
| Swedish | with a, before b | after z, first of å ä ö | after z, after å |
| Finnish | with a, before b | after z, first of å ä ö | after z, after å |
| Danish | á à â with a, before b | the very last letter, after æ and ø | after z, filed with æ |
So a Swedish address book puts Åke and Åsa after every name that starts with Z, and a Danish one treats Århus as one of the last words in the alphabet. The Danish chart also files a double aa together with å, so an old spelling with aa lands where the å words are. If a spreadsheet sorts Umeå among the A's, it is not using the Swedish rules.
Danish wrote that aa in ordinary words until order no. 128 of 22 March 1948 (opens in a new tab) replaced it with å; the Danish alphabet page tells the rest of that story.
How does Portuguese choose between á, â, ã and à?
Portuguese writes á, â, ã and à, and each accented a has its own job: an open a, a closed a, a nasal a or a merged a. The Portuguese spelling agreement, the Acordo Ortográfico, sets the rules in the table below. It was signed in Lisbon on 16 December 1990, and Brazil's Decreto 6.583 of 29 September 2008 put it into force there from 1 January 2009.
| Letter | What it marks, per the Acordo | Examples in the Acordo | Common words in the facts |
|---|---|---|---|
| á | a stressed open a, as at the end of a word stressed on its last syllable | está, já, olá | está, já, há |
| â | a stressed a that is closed, as before m or n | cânfora, lâmpada, Islândia | câmara, pânico, distância |
| ã | a nasal a at the end of a word, written with the til | afã, lã, órfã | não, mãe, são |
| à | the preposition a fused with the article a or with aquele, aquela and aquilo | à, às, àquele, àquilo | às, àquele, àquela |
So ã and á are not spellings of the same sound. WikiPron writes não as /nɐ̃w̃/ with the nasal sign. The grave on à has a narrower job than the others: the Acordo uses it only to show that the preposition a has fused with the word after it.
One acute is left to the writer. The Acordo makes it optional on past-tense forms such as amámos and louvámos, where it tells them apart from the present amamos and louvamos.
What do à and â tell a French reader?
French writes à and â, and the Unicode CLDR lists no á in the French alphabet. Larousse explains what each of these accented a's tells the reader: the grave separates words that look alike, and the circumflex can mark a long vowel.
- à, the grave accent. On a, Larousse says, the grave tells apart words that are otherwise spelled the same, such as là and la. The same mark sits in déjà and voilà.
- â, the circumflex. Larousse says the circumflex can mark a long vowel, as in pâté, tell homonyms apart, or record the history of a word. It sits in âge, grâce and gâteau.
On a Mac, à is Option and the backtick key, then A, and â is Option+I, then A.
Which accented a's survive in English words?
Few, and all of them arrive with a borrowed word. Wiktionary's English entries, ranked by how often each word turns up in English subtitles, keep à in voilà, â in château and pâté, and ä in fräulein. The facts hold no common English word with á, ã, å or ā. In an English sentence, then, an a with accent mark almost always belongs to a borrowed word like these, and the copy tiles above hold each one.
Where do you meet ā, the a with a line over it?
In the Unicode CLDR, the alphabets that include ā are Latvian, Māori and Tongan, among a few others. Wikidata's given names with ā include Jānis, Kārlis and Voldemārs. In Latvian sorting, ā comes straight after a and before b, not at the end like Swedish å.
GeoNames shows ā in place names as well: Liepāja and Mārupe in Latvia, and Wahiawā in the United States. Windows has no Alt code for ā. In Word, type 0101 and press Alt+X; on a Mac, press and hold A and choose ā.
Which languages use á, à, â, ä, ã, å or ā?
Between them, á, à, â, ä, ã, å and ā are part of the standard alphabet of 51 languages in the Unicode CLDR. Each letter's languages:
- á
- 23 languages:
- Afrikaans
- Anii
- Asturian
- Czech
- Dutch
- Ewe
- Faroese
- Galician
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Interlingue
- Irish
- Kaingang
- Nigerian Pidgin
- Occitan
- Portuguese
- Slovak
- Spanish
- Tongan
- Vietnamese
- Welsh
- Western Frisian
- Yoruba
- à
- 22 languages:
- Anii
- Catalan
- Ewe
- French
- Italian
- Ligurian
- Maltese
- Norwegian
- Occitan
- Piedmontese
- Portuguese
- Romansh
- Sardinian
- Scottish Gaelic
- Sicilian
- Swedish
- Venetian
- Vietnamese
- Welsh
- Western Frisian
- Wolof
- Yoruba
- â
- 11 languages:
- Afrikaans
- Anii
- French
- Javanese
- Ligurian
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Sicilian
- Vietnamese
- Welsh
- Western Frisian
- ä
- 12 languages:
- Dutch
- Estonian
- Finnish
- German
- Ligurian
- Low German
- Luxembourgish
- Slovak
- Swedish
- Turkmen
- Welsh
- Western Frisian
- ã
- 6 languages:
- Ewe
- Kaingang
- Nheengatu
- Portuguese
- Silesian
- Vietnamese
- å
- 6 languages:
- Danish
- Finnish
- Javanese
- Low German
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- ā
- 4 languages: Kuvi, Latvian, Māori, Tongan
Which common words use á, à, â, ä, ã, å or ā?
FrequencyWords counts the words used in film and TV subtitles, and its lists give these as the most frequent words with each letter in each language, most common first.
- á
- Spanish:
- está
- más
- estás
- están
- mamá
- papá
- será
- quizá
Portuguese:- está
- já
- há
- estás
- lá
- olá
- cá
- vá
- à
- French:
- là
- déjà
- voilà
- çà
- revoilà
- delà
- holà
Portuguese:- às
- àquele
- àquela
- àqueles
- àquilo
- àquelas
Italian:- già
- sarà
- papà
- là
- città
- verità
- farà
- realtà
- â
- French:
- grâce
- âge
- âme
- lâche
- gâteau
- bâtiment
- hâte
- théâtre
Portuguese:- câmara
- distância
- câmaras
- pânico
- vigilância
- importância
- ambulância
- circunstâncias
- ä
- German:
- wäre
- hätte
- mädchen
- männer
- später
- hätten
- spät
- erzählt
- ã
- Portuguese:
- não
- então
- são
- estão
- tão
- mãe
- vão
- razão
No list here has a common word with å and ā.
How do you pronounce á, à, â, ä, ã, å or ā?
WikiPron transcribes these letters in common words from Wiktionary: in Spanish, está is /esta/; in French, déjà is /deʒa/; in French, grâce is /ɡʁas/. The table gives one example word per letter and language.
| Letter | Language | Example | IPA |
|---|---|---|---|
| á | Spanish | está | /esta/ |
| á | Portuguese | está | /esta/ |
| à | French | déjà | /deʒa/ |
| à | Portuguese | àquele | /akele/ |
| à | Italian | già | /d͡ʒa/ |
| â | French | grâce | /ɡʁas/ |
| â | Portuguese | câmara | /kɐmaɾa/ |
| ä | German | wäre | /veːʁə/ |
| ã | Portuguese | não | /nɐ̃w̃/ |
The WikiPron lists used here have no example word for å and ā.
How to type a with accent, step by step
Step 1: Spanish á
Mac: Option+E, then A. Windows: Alt+0225, digits on the number pad. Word: Ctrl+', then A. Phone: hold the A key and slide to á.
Step 2: French à and â
For à: Option+` then A on a Mac, Ctrl+` then A in Word, ` then A on a Chromebook set to US International. For â: Option+I then A on a Mac, Ctrl+Shift+^ then A in Word, Shift+6 then A on that Chromebook layout. Windows: Alt+0224 for à and Alt+0226 for â.
Step 3: Portuguese ã
Mac: Option+N, then A. Word: Ctrl+Shift+~, then A. Chromebook with the US International layout: Shift+`, then A. Windows: Alt+0227.
Step 4: German, Swedish or Finnish ä
Mac: Option+U, then A. Word: Ctrl+Shift+:, then A. Chromebook with the US International layout: Shift+', then A. Windows: Alt+0228.
Step 5: Danish, Norwegian or Swedish å
Mac: Option+A alone gives å and Shift+Option+A gives Å. Word: Ctrl+Shift+@, then A. Windows: Alt+0229. No Chromebook shortcut is documented for å; copy it from the tiles.
Step 6: Latvian ā
Mac: hold down A until the accent menu opens, then choose ā. Word: type 0101, then Alt+X. Elsewhere on Windows: Win+. opens the emoji panel, and its Symbols tab has ā.
Which letters are related to a with accent?
These letter pages share an accent mark or a language with á à â ä ã å ā, the most shared languages first.
Whole alphabets with every letter in order, including á, å, ä, à, â, ā and ã:
- Czech alphabet
- Danish alphabet
- Dutch alphabet
- French alphabet
- German alphabet
- Hungarian alphabet
- Icelandic alphabet
- Italian alphabet
- Latvian alphabet
- Portuguese alphabet
- Romanian alphabet
- Slovak alphabet
- Swedish alphabet
- Vietnamese alphabet
Every letter with the same mark, on one page, for á, â, à, ã and ä: Accent aigu, Circumflex, Grave accent, Tilde, Umlaut.
How to spell words written with ä and å: doppelgänger, smörgåsbord.
Which names and places are spelled with á, à, â, ä, ã, å or ā?
Given names come from Wikidata, the most widely covered first by the number of Wikipedia editions about them, and places come from the GeoNames list of cities, largest population first, kept only where an official language of the country writes the letter.
- á
- Given names:
- Zoltán
- András
- Václav
- Álvaro
- Kálmán
- Ciarán
- Sándor
- István
- Nándor
- Siobhán
- Károly
- Árpád
Places:- Bogotá (Colombia)
- Ciudad Juárez (Mexico)
- Naucalpan de Juárez (Mexico)
- Culiacán (Mexico)
- Álvaro Obregón (Mexico)
- Acapulco de Juárez (Mexico)
- Cuiabá (Brazil)
- Coyoacán (Mexico)
- à
Given names: Tomàs, Àngel, Màjid
Places:- Vũng Tàu (Vietnam)
- Hai Bà Trưng (Vietnam)
- Hà Tĩnh (Vietnam)
- Ðà Lạt (Vietnam)
- Thành Phố Bà Rịa (Vietnam)
- Điện Bàn (Vietnam)
- Cà Mau (Vietnam)
- Phan Rang-Tháp Chàm (Vietnam)
- â
Given names: Kâzım, Siân, Cândido
Places:- Goiânia (Brazil)
- Uberlândia (Brazil)
- Aparecida de Goiânia (Brazil)
- Gia Lâm (Vietnam)
- Thanh Xuân (Vietnam)
- Ceilândia (Brazil)
- Xuân Lộc (Vietnam)
- Hortolândia (Brazil)
- ä
- Given names:
- Irenäus
- Märta
- Matthäus
- Väinö
- Päivi
- Bartholomäus
- Bärbel
- Märtha
- Käthe
- Märt
- Svätopluk
- Säde
Places:- Jyväskylä (Finland)
- Västerås (Sweden)
- Lasnamäe (Estonia)
- Gävle (Sweden)
- Växjö (Sweden)
- Södertälje (Sweden)
- Hämeenlinna (Finland)
- Mustamäe (Estonia)
- ã
Given names: João, Estêvão, Sebastião
Places:- São Paulo (Brazil)
- São Luís (Brazil)
- São Bernardo do Campo (Brazil)
- João Pessoa (Brazil)
- São José dos Campos (Brazil)
- Ribeirão Preto (Brazil)
- Jaboatão dos Guararapes (Brazil)
- São José do Rio Preto (Brazil)
- å
- Given names:
- Åke
- Åge
- Håkan
- Kåre
- Åsa
- Mårten
- Åse
- Håvard
- Ståle
- Åsmund
- Pål
- Måns
Places:- Århus (Denmark)
- Umeå (Sweden)
- Västerås (Sweden)
- Luleå (Sweden)
- Borås (Sweden)
- Ålesund (Norway)
- Åsane (Norway)
- Skellefteå (Sweden)
- ā
- Given names:
- Vārāhī
- Āstīka
- Vināyakī
- Padmāvatī
- Yogamāyā
- Ammāvaru
- Ghassān
- Ḥassān
- Kārlis
- ʻAbd al-Wahhāb
- Voldemārs
- Jānis
Places: Liepāja (Latvia), Wahiawā-Whitmore (United States), Mārupe (Latvia), Wahiawā (United States), Dārzciems (Latvia)
What are the Alt codes for a with accent?
Hold Alt and type the digits on the number pad with Num Lock on. The top row of digits does not work, and laptops without a number pad need the methods above.
| Letter | Alt code |
|---|---|
| á | Alt+0225 |
| à | Alt+0224 |
| â | Alt+0226 |
| ä | Alt+0228 |
| ã | Alt+0227 |
| å | Alt+0229 |
| Á | Alt+0193 |
| À | Alt+0192 |
| Â | Alt+0194 |
| Ä | Alt+0196 |
| Ã | Alt+0195 |
| Å | Alt+0197 |
ā Ā have no Alt code: Windows cannot type them that way.
Which English words keep á, à, â, ä, ã, å or ā?
Wiktionary lists these English words spelled with each letter, most common first by how often they appear in English subtitles:
- à
- voilà
- â
- château, pâté
- ä
- fräulein
Wiktionary lists no English word with á, ã, å and ā that English subtitles use.
What is the Unicode code for á?
á is U+00E1, LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE, added in Unicode 1.1 in 1993. In UTF-8 it is stored as the bytes C3 A1, and the table gives every escape a developer needs.
| Code point | U+00E1 |
|---|---|
| Name | LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE |
| Added in | Unicode 1.1 (1993) |
| UTF-8 bytes | C3 A1 |
| HTML | á á á |
| CSS | \00E1 |
| JavaScript | \u00E1 |
| Python | \u00e1 |
| URL | %C3%A1 |
If a page shows á instead of á, its UTF-8 bytes are being read as Windows-1252. Serve the page as UTF-8 (<meta charset="utf-8">) to fix it.
Need a letter other than á?
Frequently asked questions about a with accent
Which a with accent do I need for Spanish?
Only á. Spanish's CLDR alphabet has no other accented a, so à, â, ã, ä, å and ā do not belong in Spanish words. Among the commonest Spanish words in the FrequencyWords subtitle counts, está, más and mamá carry it. Mac users get it with Option+E followed by A.
How do I type a capital A with accent?
Shift goes on the letter, not on the accent key. Mac: Option+E, then Shift+A, makes Á. Word: Ctrl+', then Shift+A. The Mac exception is Å, a single chord: Shift+Option+A. Phones work the same way once Shift is on: hold A and pick the capital. On Windows each capital has an Alt code of its own, such as Alt+0193 for Á.
Is ã the same letter as á in Portuguese?
No. They mark different sounds. The Portuguese spelling agreement writes the til on an a that is nasal at the end of a word, as in lã and órfã, and the acute on a stressed open a, as in está and já. WikiPron transcribes não as /nɐ̃w̃/, with the nasal sign, and está as /esta/, without it.
Is there an Alt code for ā?
No: ā is missing from the a Alt codes Windows offers, which cover á, à, â, ã, ä and å. Word converts a typed 0101 into ā when you press Alt+X right after it. Outside Word, Win+. opens the emoji panel, whose Symbols tab lists ā, or copy ā from the tiles on this page.