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Introduction

There are five different kinds of accent marks used in written French; However, they often do not imply stress; Stress in French, although comparatively weaker than other Romance languages, always falls on the last syllable. They are:

accent	letters used	examples
acute accent (accent aigu)	é only	éléphant: elephant
grave accent (accent grave)	è, à, ù	fièvre: fever, là: there où: where
circumflex (accent circonflexe)	â, ê, î, ô, û	gâteau: cake, être: to be, île: island, chômage: unemployment, dû: past participle of devoir
diaeresis (tréma)	ë, ï, ü, ÿ**	Noël: Christmas, maïs: corn, aigüe: acute(fem)*
cedilla (cédille)	ç only	français: French

• *Note: As of the spelling reform of 1990, the diaresis indicating gu is not a digraph on words finishing in guë is now placed on the u in standard (AKA "académie française" French) : aigüe and not aiguë, cigüe and not ciguë, ambigüe and not ambiguë (acute(fem), conium, ambiguous). Since this reform is relatively recent and mostly unknown to laypeople, the two spellings can be used interchangeably.
• **Note: The letter ÿ is only used in very rare words, mostly old town names like L'Haÿ-Les-Roses, a Paris surburb. This letter is pronounced like ï.

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Acute accent - Accent aigu

The acute accent (French, accent aigu) is the most common accent used in written French. It is only used with the letter e and is always pronounced /e/.

One use of the accent aigu is to form the past participle of regular -er verbs.

infinitive	past participle
aimer, to love	aimé, loved
regarder, to watch	regardé, watched

Another thing to note is if you are unsure of how to translate certain words into English from French, and the word begins with é, replace that with the letter s and you will occasionally get the English word, or an approximation thereof:

• étable --> stable (for horses)
• école --> scole --> school
• il étudie --> il studie --> he studies
• And to combine what you already know about the accent aigu, here is one last example:
  • étranglé (from étrangler) --> stranglé --> strangled

NB: This will not work with every word that begins with é.

You can omit the "é" for making comprehensible and "french-looking" sentences, except in the past participle where it unmutes the last vowel (ex : parle (parl) -> parlé (parley))

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Grave accent - Accent grave

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à and ù

In the case of the letters à and ù, the grave accent (Fr. accent grave), is used to graphically distinguish one word from another.

without accent grave	with accent grave
a (3rd pers. sing of avoir, to have)	à (preposition, to, at, etc.)
la (definite article for feminine nouns)	là (there)
ou (conjunction, or)	où (where)

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è

Unlike à and ù, è is not used to distinguish words from one another. The è is used for pronunciation. In careful speech, an unaccented e is pronounced /euh/, and in rapid speech is sometimes not pronounced at all. The è is pronounced like the letter e in pet.

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Cedilla - Cédille

The cedilla is used only with the letter "c", and is said to make the "c" soft, making it equivalent to the English and French S.

• le garçon --> (boy'')

French/Lessons/Introductory/Footer

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French Accents:

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How to use french accents on wordpad: using french accents is easy if your know how to use the 'Alt' button on your pc keyboard. simply press and hold the 'Alt' key which is to the left of your 'SpaceBar' key. then, while holding down the 'Alt' key, press the desired code from the list below.

Note: make sure 'num lock' button is activated {press it if it isn't}. when typing in the code, use the numbers on the right of the keyboard.

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The list of french accents:

NOTE: bold print has been used so you know where one of these accents ends.

à - code: 133
â - code: 131

ä - code: 132
æ {ae} - code: 145

œ {oe} - code: 0156
ç - code: 135

é - code: 130
ê - code: 136

è - code: 138
ë - code: 137

î - code: 140
ï - code: 139

ô - code: 147
ù - code: 151

û - code: 150
ü - code: 129

« - code: 174
» - code: 175

À - code: 0192
 - code: 0194

Ä - code: 142
Ç - code: 128

É - code: 144
Ê - code: 0202

È - code: 0200
Ë - code: 0203

Î - code: 0206
Ï - code: 0207

Ô - code: 0212
Ù - code: 0217

Û - code: 0219
Ü - code: 154 or 220

Æ {ae} - code: 146
Π{oe} - code: 0140

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french accents