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The nordic layout(s) offer such a mechanism to allow people to type in letters that you'll find in various other European languages, even though the extra letters used in the languages themselves (ÅÄÖÆØ) are present as their own keys. Interestingly, the Swedish layout has no dedicated é key, although é occurs in some Swedish words.

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In Swedish, Å, Ä, and Ö are actual letters of the alphabet, while é is used in foreign words. Like the English dieresis (e.g. in coöperate) is essentially unknown in the US and only occasionally used in England, so doesn't give rise to characters with dieresis on the keyboard.

é is used commonly in names and some words that don't feel foreign. For example the word for idea is written idé. Seems like it's an old loan from greek.

The accent gives away that this is in fact a loan from French

I guess it's time to learn to use some real swedish words then and not the foreign ones. Bye idé, hello hugskott. (Hug/håg = mind, skott = shot)

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