French Accent Marks & Letters

The French alphabet has the same 26 letters as English. On top of them French writes five marks: the acute accent (accent aigu) on é, the grave accent (accent grave) on à è ù, the circumflex (accent circonflexe) on â ê î ô û, the diaeresis (tréma) on ë ï ü ÿ and the cedilla (cédille) on ç. Together with the ligatures œ and æ that makes 16 extra small letters and 16 capitals.

None of them is a separate letter. Dictionaries sort été with ete and garçon with garcon; the marks only decide the order when two words are otherwise spelled the same. Children reciting the alphabet still say 26 letters.

The ligature œ (e dans l’o) is required in words like cœur (heart), sœur (sister), œuf (egg), œil (eye) and œuvre (work); writing oe is a common shortcut but counts as a typo in careful text. æ is rare and comes from Latin: ex æquo, curriculum vitæ, the first name Lætitia.

French accent marks: what é è ê à ç ô ë do

é is the closed e of café, été and the past participles of -er verbs like parlé or aimé. è is the open e of père, mère and très. On à and ù the grave accent changes no sound; it tells words apart: a (has) and à (to, at), la (the) and là (there), ou (or) and où (where), des (some) and dès (from, as soon as).

The circumflex often marks an s that French lost centuries ago and English kept: forêt (forest), hôpital (hospital), île (isle), château (castle), fête (feast). It also separates words: sur (on) and sûr (sure), du and dû (owed), mur (wall) and mûr (ripe), jeune (young) and jeûne (fast), tache (stain) and tâche (task). The 1990 spelling reform made the circumflex optional on i and u except in verb endings and words where it distinguishes meaning (connaître or connaitre is allowed); it remains in sûr, dû, mûr and jeûne.

The tréma says: pronounce this vowel on its own. Noël has two syllables, no-ël, and so has naïf; and maïs (corn) is a different word from mais (but). The name of Haïti is written with it in French. ü appears in a handful of words such as capharnaüm and, after the 1990 reform, aigüe; ÿ only in a few names, like the town of L’Haÿ-les-Roses near Paris.

The cédille turns a hard c into an s sound before a, o and u: ça, garçon, leçon, reçu, and the name of the language itself, français. Without it garcon would read "gar-kon". Before e and i a c already sounds like s, so ç never appears there.

French punctuation: « » guillemets and the space before ! and ?

French quotes with angle marks called guillemets, « », with a space inside: « Bonjour ». A quote inside a quote takes “ ” or a second pair of guillemets; Swiss French also uses the single ‹ ›. In novels, dialogue opens with « and each change of speaker starts a new line with a dash —.

France puts a space before the two-part marks ; : ! ? and before the closing »: Ça va ?, Merci !. Typographers use a narrow no-break space, so the mark never ends up alone at the start of a line. Quebec usage is lighter and often drops the space before ! ? and ;. The apostrophe is constant in French (l’été, j’aime, aujourd’hui); the curly ’ is the typographic form.

Ordinals use raised letters: 1ᵉʳ (premier), 1ʳᵉ (première), 2ᵉ (deuxième), le XXIᵉ siècle; numéro is shortened to n°. Prices put the sign after the amount, with a decimal comma: 12,50 €, 20 $ in Canada. Before the euro, France priced things in francs, written F or FF; the ₣ sign exists in Unicode but was little used, and ₶ is the livre tournois, the money of old France.

How to type French accents on a keyboard

Windows: hold Alt and type the code on the number pad: à 0224, â 0226, æ 0230, ç 0231, è 0232, é 0233, ê 0234, ë 0235, î 0238, ï 0239, ô 0244, œ 0156, ù 0249, û 0251, ü 0252, ÿ 0255. Capitals: À 0192,  0194, Æ 0198, Ç 0199, È 0200, É 0201, Ê 0202, Ë 0203, Î 0206, Ï 0207, Ô 0212, Œ 0140, Ù 0217, Û 0219, Ü 0220, Ÿ 0159. Guillemets « 0171 and » 0187, € 0128. Without a number pad, add the United States-International layout: ' then e gives é, then a gives à, ^ then o gives ô, " then i gives ï, ' then c gives ç. In Microsoft Word, Ctrl + ' then e gives é, Ctrl + then a gives à, Ctrl + Shift + ^ then a vowel gives the circumflex, Ctrl + Shift + : then a vowel the tréma, Ctrl + , then c gives ç and Ctrl + Shift + & then o gives œ.

Mac: hold the letter and choose from the pop-up, or use dead keys: Option + E then e for é, Option + ` then a letter for à è ù, Option + I then a letter for â ê î ô û, Option + U then a letter for ë ï ü ÿ, Option + C for ç (Option + Shift + C for Ç), Option + Q for œ, Option + ' for æ, Option + \ and Option + Shift + \ for « and ».

French keyboards: the AZERTY layout of France and Belgium has é, è, ç, à and ù on their own keys and dead keys for ^ and ¨; Canada uses a QWERTY-based Canadian French layout and Switzerland a QWERTZ one. Phones: long-press e, a, c, o, u, i or y for every accented form, or add a French keyboard. HTML: é è ê à ç ô œ « ».

Where French is spoken

French is an official language in Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. CLDR estimates about 330 million people speak it, counting second-language speakers. The largest numbers are in France (about 66 million), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (about 59 million, Kinshasa being often called the largest French-speaking city), Cameroon (about 21 million), Canada (about 11 million, most of them in Quebec) and Côte d’Ivoire (about 10 million), followed by Belgium, Switzerland, Haiti, Senegal, Madagascar and the other countries whose flags are above. In Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia French is not official but is widely used in school, business and the press, about 16, 13 and 6 million speakers by the same estimates.

French is a Romance language, a sister of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian, and a lexifier for creoles with their own spelling: Haitian Creole, Réunion Creole and Morisyen of Mauritius. In France and Belgium it lives beside regional languages such as Occitan, Breton, Picard and Walloon; in Africa beside Lingala, Wolof and Kabyle. Each has its own collection here, and so do the countries: France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland and more.