1 The letters of the French language
The French language uses a script written horizontally (unlike some written vertically e.g. traditional Chinese or Japanese) from left to right (unlike Arabic or Hebrew). You found out in Week 1 that the French alphabet is comprised of 26 letters. It is the same alphabet as used in the English language, sometimes referred to as the Latin alphabet (as opposed, for example, to the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets, used by Greek and Russian respectively).
Alphabets are a writing system where letters represent sounds. This is different from non-alphabetic systems (e.g. Chinese) where a single character can represent a whole word.
In addition to the 26 letters of the alphabet, French uses diacritics (signs added to letters, for example in é or ç) and ligatures (two letters combined together, for example œ). Note that letters with diacritics or ligatures don’t count as separate letters in the French alphabet.
Activity _unit5.1.1 Activity 1 French diacritics
a.
é
b.
â
c.
ø
d.
ç
e.
ñ
f.
æ
g.
ï
h.
å
i.
ß
j.
š
The correct answers are a, b, d, f and g.
French uses the following diacritics and ligatures:
| English term | French term | How to write |
|---|---|---|
acute accent |
accent aigu |
é |
grave accent |
accent grave |
à è ù |
circumflex accent |
accent circonflexe |
â ê î ô û |
diaeresis |
tréma |
ë ï ü |
cedilla |
cédille |
ç |
ligature |
e dans l’a / a–e entrelacés / a–e liés e dans l’o / o–e entrelacés / o–e liés |
æ œ |
The most frequently used ones are the acute, grave and circumflex accents. When you learn French vocabulary, you will need to remember whether words are spelt with any accents. With some practice it will become second nature!
Some of the diacritics in French are used to indicate different pronunciations of the same letters. You will learn how to distinguish and pronounce them when you start learning French. In Week 5 you will do a taster activity about this.