1.1 Accents, cedilla, diaeresis — what they change — Epoché
What you will be able to do Name all five marks that French puts on letters, and say what each one is for: the acute, the grave, the circumflex, the cedilla and the diaeresis. Read é , è and ê apart from each other, which is where a mark most often changes the sound of a vowel. Explain when French writes c and when it writes ç , and why the cedilla exists at all. Type every one of these marks on a computer and on a phone, without copying and pasting them from somewhere else. Prerequisites : 0.4 — you should already know that a written consonant at the end of a word is usually silent, and you should be able to produce the nasal vowels, because several of the words in this lesson combine a mark with a silent ending. See 0.4 Sounds if you need it. You have already been reading these marks for years. English helped itself to thousands of French words, and when it took the ones that arrived late it usually took the marks too: the place that sells coffee, the person engaged to be married, the summary attached to a job application, the naive person, the worn-out phrase, the front of a building. English readers take all of them in their stride. What English readers do not do is read them. In English those marks are decoration: they tell you the word is foreign and, at most, that the final vowel is pronounced. In French they are part of the spelling, as much as a letter is, and in a handful of cases the mark is the only thing keeping two different words apart. This is a small and forgiving system: five marks, a short list of letters, and only a few places where a mark regularly changes a sound. What it does demand is precision in writing, and there is an obstacle in the way, because on an English keyboard none of these characters has a key. So the lesson ends with the keyboard, which is the part learners most often skip and most often regret skipping. The five marks and what they are called Here are the five, with the French name, the English name and the job. Learn the French names: they are what a teacher, a dictionary or a spellchecker will use, and three of the five are close enough to English words that you get them for free. Mark and French name What it does é — accent aigu , the acute Goes on e only. Marks the closed vowel [e]. This one changes the sound. è — accent grave , the grave On e it marks the open vowel [ɛ] and changes the sound. On a and u it changes nothing at all and only tells two words apart. ê — accent circonflexe , the circumflex Goes on any of the five vowels. On e it marks the open vowel [ɛ], like the grave. On o it usually marks the closed [o]: côte [kot] against cote [kɔt]. On a it traditionally marks a back [ɑ], a difference many speakers no longer make. On i and u it is a historical scar and changes nothing you can hear. ç — cédille , the cedilla Goes under c only. Forces the letter to be read [s] in a place where it would otherwise be [k]. ï — tréma , the diaeresis Goes on e , i and u . Says that this vowel is read on its own and does not join the letter before it into a single sound, except in some specific cases like aiguë where it sits on a silent e to make the u pronounced. Notice how much of that table says changes nothing . The marks that reliably affect pronunciation are the three on the letter e , the circumflex on o , the cedilla and the diaeresis. Notice too that the marks never stack: a French vowel carries at most one. Spelling to sound This is the part that matters for your ear, and it is entirely about the letter e . Bare e in an open syllable is the weak vowel [ə], the one in the middle of the word for tomorrow , and in many positions it is dropped altogether in speech. Put a mark on it and it becomes a full vowel, and which full vowel depends on which mark. Letter Sound, and a word to hang it on é [e], closed: tongue high, lips spread, no glide. été [ete] — summer. Close to the vowel of English say with the glide cut off. è [ɛ], open: jaw lower. très [tʁɛ] — very. The vowel of English bed . ê [ɛ], open, the same as the grave. tête [tɛt] — head. e with no mark, syllable open [ə], weak, often dropped. demain [dəmɛ̃] — tomorrow. e with no mark, syllable closed by a consonant [ɛ], open, with no mark needed. mer [mɛʁ] — sea; belle [bɛl] — beautiful. the infinitive ending -er , and -ez [e], closed, with no mark needed. parler [paʁle] — to speak; parlez [paʁle] — you speak. Read the last three rows again, because they hold the real insight. The mark is not the only way French writes those two vowels; it is the way French writes them when the shape of the syllable does not already settle the matter. A closed syllable gives the open vowel by itself, and the endings of the infinitive and of the second person plural give the closed vowel by themselves, so neither needs a mark. That explains a pattern which otherwise looks like chaos. Verb forms shift their marks around as the endings change, and it is the syllable, not caprice, that moves them: the mark tracks the sound, and the sound tracks the syllable. The distinction between the two vowels is real but small, and it is worth being honest about how much it matters. Many speakers keep them apart only imperfectly at the end of a word, and no listener will fail to understand you if you produce the open vowel where the closed one belongs. What does get noticed is an English diphthong: if you say the word for summer with the gliding vowel of English say , the glide is audible and foreign. Cut the glide, hold the vowel steady, and you are most of the way there. The marks that change little or nothing Now the silent half of the system, which is larger than the noisy half. Whatever it does to the sound, the circumflex is almost always a grave marker in the archaeological sense: it shows where a letter, usually an s , used to be. Once you notice the pattern you can often guess the English cognate from the accented French word: think what happens if you put an s back after the vowel in the words for forest , coast , hos