www.alphadictionary.com

But my native feeling is that they are letters in their own right, in the same way as an E isn't an F with an added _ diacritic.

I agree with you, but certainly that doesn't apply to all Portuguese and Spanish accents (except Portuguese ç, ã, and õ and Spanish ñ), which are only there to mark stressed syllables, nothing else.

Brazilian dude

I agree, of course. We have some stress accents indicated in Swedish as well in loan words (probably not in inherited words). What we don't have (yet?) is the possibility to differentiate between the number one and the idefinite article. I envy Danish and Dutch: én/en and één/een for one and a, respectively.

Anders, why don't you start that movement in Swedish? I'll back you all the way.

Brazilian dude