The usual diacritics are the acute (accent aigu), the grave (`), accent grave), the circumflex (ˆ), accent circonflexe), the diaeresis (¨⟩, tréma), and the cedilla (¸), cédille. Diacritics have no effect on the primary alphabetical order.
- Acute accent or accent aigu (é): over e, indicates uniquely the sound /e/. An é in modern French is often used where a combination of e and a consonant, usually s, would have been used formerly: écouter - escouter.
- Grave accent or accent grave (à, è, ù): over a or u, used primarily to distinguish homophones: à ("to") vs. a ("has"), ou ("or") vs. où ("where"; the letter ù is used only in this word). Over an e, indicates the sound /ɛ/.
- Circumflex or accent circonflexe (â, ê, î, ô, û): over a, e and o, indicates the sound /ɑ/, /ɛ/ and /o/, respectively, but the distinction a /a/ vs. â /ɑ/ tends to disappear in Parisian French, so they are both pronounced [a].
- Diaeresis or tréma (ë, ï, ü, ÿ): over e, i, u or y, indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël. A diaeresis on y only occurs in some proper names and in modern editions of old French texts.
- Cedilla or cédille (ç): under c, indicates that it is pronounced /s/ rather than /k/. Thus je lance "I throw" (with c = [s] before e), je lançais "I was throwing" (c would be pronounced [k] before a without the cedilla). The cedilla is only used before the vowels a, o or u, for example, ça /sa/; it is never used before the vowels e, i, or y, since these three vowels always produce a soft /s/ sound (ce, ci, cycle).
🖒🖒🖒
ОтветитьУдалить