Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com FM 34-54 GERMAN: German uses the umlaut u > on . This is the language's only diacritic. German also uses a special letter, the Eszett , which does not begin a word. In regular prose, capitalization is rather frequent since all nouns are capitalized. Definite article forms: der, die, das, des, dem, den. DUTCH: Dutch can be mistaken for German; however, Dutch does not capitalize its nouns in regular prose. Dutch adopted a few diacritical forms from the French language. These include: acute ; grave ; apostrophe ; dieresis ; and sometimes the cedilla >. Definite article forms: de and het.
For Spanish, look for acutes occasionally over vowels, tilde over but not over vowels, no grave accents, and words that end in . For Portuguese look for the tilde over and but not over , the cedilla under , and some words that end in . For Italian look for occasional graves over vowels, no tildes or cedillas, and numerous doubled consonants; for example, , , , , and so forth. Of course, look for the definite articles; they are frequently used and mostly different in the three languages. SPANISH: Spanish uses acute > on vowels and tilde on .
Since the acute marks irregular word accent, there will normally be no more than one acute per word and it will appear on the last vowel or third from last vowel. Dieresis u > is used occasionally over . Grave and circumflex are not used. Definite article forms: el, la, los, las. PORTUGUESE: Portuguese uses acute , grave , and circumflex occasionally over vowels, and tilde frequently over and . Cedilla > is used under . Dieresis u > is used over vowels occasionally. Definite article forms: o, os, a, as. G-6 DISTINGUISHING SPANISH, PORTUGUESE, AND ITALIAN