Your first paragraph insists that "the presence or lack of accent does not as a rule change the meaning of a word." While your second insists that "[the same word without an accent] is simply misspelled as all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel."
But your accent rule also isn't followed by the language you claim uses it as a hard and fast rule: in the case of the single syllable Catalan word ma (my, femenine) and mà (hand). Please square that with your declaration that " all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel." Seemingly ma is breaking your rules, as well as your assertion that missing the accent is only a spelling error. In this, and many other cases, the accent completely changes the meaning of the word which also contradicts your assertion I highlighted in paragraph 1. Maybe "as a rule" isn't the correct phrase given the multitude of words that can change meaning with an accent mark.
The broader thing you missed is that Catala is the last name of a person working on the project, and is not missing an accent. That is how the person's name is spelled. Even in Catalan. Català is a Catalan word refering to a different thing. In this case the accent is incredibly important since it helps us differentiate between a man's name and a language.
In both the figurative and spelling sense we must therefore conclude that, in reality:
You clearly don’t even speak the language and are just fishing for an argument. I have already explained why your comment is incorrect, have nothing else to say to you on that subject if you insist that the accent mark will completely change the meaning without understanding that the accent in català follows the normal ortographical rules while the accent in mà is diacritic, a special rule that only applies to often monosyllabic words.
mà / ma does not break the general rule because the word does have an accent mark, it just also falls under the diacritic special rule.
On your point about the author’s last name, it’s fair, but also you’re ignoring that the last name comes from the same word and is thus a spelling variation from French/Occitan, further proving your assertion of Catala != Català as wrong.
> You clearly don’t even speak the language and are just fishing for an argument.
Please refrain from making negative assumptions about my language skills and motives. I am not a native speaker of the language, but I do read and understand it fine. This is not the place for passive or backhanded personal attacks.
> I have already explained why your comment is incorrect, have nothing else to say to you on that subject...
Since you made it personal, and then went on to say quite a bit on that subject I will provide my comments:
Thank you for acknowledging the validity of my points. I hear your argument, but it doesn't invalidate mine. Either an accent mark has no bearing on the meaning of a word or it does. I have demonstrated that it is absolutely and undeniably the case that an accent mark can change the meaning of a word in Catalan.
My original assertion is, verbatim: "...the accent can completely change the meaning of a word". You aren't arguing that ma and mà are the same word, despite your assertion that "the presence or lack of accent does not as a rule change the meaning of a word".
I don't address formal grammatical rules, and I am not arguing against your interpretation, it is correct AFAICT. I understand that there are rules for placing accent marks, which is why I asked you to explain the full rule when I was able to easily contradict the grammar rule. That doesn't contradict my argument.
The argument is simply that the placement of an accent changes the meaning of some words in Catalan. There was a side argument that if the last syllable is stressed it must have an accent on the vowel, which you asserted was true "as a rule". That was not true, as evidenced by you having to explain when it doesn't work "as a rule". It can be the case that accent marks have rules for when they are written, and also be the case that different words can have the same letters and differ only in the accent. Both of our arguments are correct.
In this exact case that is what is happening. Catala is a niche programming language named after a french man. Català is a language. The presence of the accent is distinguishing meanings between Catala and Català. I can write the following: "Parlo català, però no se res sobre el llenguage Catala", and the presence or absence of accents will mean the difference between that sentence being gibberish and that sentence meaning something. Likewise, Ma, si, dona, que, etc. can all have an accent added to them to give them a completely different meaning in Catalan. It is unequivocally true, and I don't know why you would assert otherwise.
But your accent rule also isn't followed by the language you claim uses it as a hard and fast rule: in the case of the single syllable Catalan word ma (my, femenine) and mà (hand). Please square that with your declaration that " all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel." Seemingly ma is breaking your rules, as well as your assertion that missing the accent is only a spelling error. In this, and many other cases, the accent completely changes the meaning of the word which also contradicts your assertion I highlighted in paragraph 1. Maybe "as a rule" isn't the correct phrase given the multitude of words that can change meaning with an accent mark.
The broader thing you missed is that Catala is the last name of a person working on the project, and is not missing an accent. That is how the person's name is spelled. Even in Catalan. Català is a Catalan word refering to a different thing. In this case the accent is incredibly important since it helps us differentiate between a man's name and a language.
In both the figurative and spelling sense we must therefore conclude that, in reality:
Catala != Català