The alphabet and the accents

Twenty-six letters, and their names out loud

You can already write every French letter. From now on the alphabet is a tool: you spell your name at a hotel desk, give an email address, ask how a new word is written. The question is Ça s’écrit comment ? – literally “that writes itself how?” – and the answer is Ça s’écrit followed by the letter names; comment may also open the question, as it opens any French question. The names follow a pattern. Most consonants are consonant + é: bé, cé, dé, gé, pé, té, vé. Six are e + consonant: effe, elle, emme, enne, erre, esse. The vowels say their own sound, and six letters have a name of their own: ache, ji, ka, ku, ixe, zède. Two traps for an English ear: e is said “uh” and i is said “ee”, so the French « i » sounds like the English letter E; and g is « gé » while j is « ji » – the reverse of English.

– Ça s’écrit comment, Marc ? – M, A, R, C.– How is that spelled, Marc? – M, A, R, C.

Five accents, five jobs

Accents are spelling, and in this app an answer without its accent is a wrong answer. The accent aigu exists only on e and closes it: é, as in café. The accent grave opens the e (è, père); on a and u it changes no sound and only tells two words apart: a (has) and à (to), ou (or) and où (where). The accent circonflexe can sit on any vowel (fête, hôtel, île) and mostly remembers a letter that disappeared centuries ago; on e it sounds like è. The tréma keeps two vowels apart: Noël has two syllables, maïs is “ma-is”. The cédille is the only sign that hangs under a consonant: it makes c soft before a, o, u – français, garçon, ça. When you spell aloud, name the letter first and its sign second: « e accent aigu », « cé cédille ».

Élève s’écrit avec un accent aigu et un accent grave.Élève is written with an acute accent and a grave accent.

The five vowels, said the French way

English spelling teaches bad habits for French: a says “ay” in name, i says “eye” in time, o slides into “oh-u” in go, u says “you”. French vowels do none of this. A letter has one sound and keeps it in every word. a is always the open “ah” of gare. i is always “ee”: midi, île, taxi. o is a short, pure o: photo, école. u is the rounded sound of tu and rue: lips as for “oo”, tongue as for “ee”. e without an accent is weak, as in de and le, or silent at the end of a word, as in petite and rose. This is why a French word can be read correctly the first time you meet it.

Tu es à l’hôtel à midi ?Are you at the hotel at noon?

Majuscule and minuscule: fewer capitals than English

A majuscule is a capital letter, a minuscule a small one. When you spell, you announce the capital: « pé majuscule, a, u, elle » – and on French forms the family name is often written entirely in capitals: DUPONT. Otherwise French uses fewer capitals than English. Nationality adjectives, languages, days and months stay small: il est français, le français, lundi, août. Only the noun for a person takes a capital: un Français. And a capital never loses its accent: École, À Paris, Émilie.