User blog:Avatar XIII/French Avatar Leçon 2 : Les Accents

Bonjour à tous et bienvenue sur mon deuxième leçon de ma série pour apprendre la langue française. Aujourd'hui, on apprend chaque accent dans cette langue. Ça peut-être difficile pour vous lorsque la langue anglaise n'a rien accents mais pas de souci. Il n'y a pas trop accents pour apprendre.

Once again, this is an early lesson, so I will speak mostly English. There are 4 accents in French, which I will place over the letter E. The accent aigu or acute accent "é", the accent grave or grave accent "è", the accent circumflex "ê", and the diaeresis "ë". Each one serves a different purpose, so listen closely. Also, these cannot be ignored. If you write or type "être" as "etre", then that would be considered a spelling error.

L'Accent Aigu É
The accent aigu only appears over the letter E in French. It changes the pronunciation from "uh" to "eyy". This is commonly found in the past participle of verbs.

L'Accent Grave È
This accent can appear over each vowel, and it serves a few purposes. For the letter E, the grave accent changes the pronunciation from "uh" to "ehh". It can be found on words such as très, première, and conjugated forms of spell changing verbs.

Another purpose of the grave accent is the change the meaning of the word. Examples, the word "des" is a contraction of "de + les". The word "dès" indicates a starting point in time. Nous partirons dès je complète mes devoirs "We will leave as soon as I finish my homework". Ou means or. Où means where.

L'Accent Circumflex Ê
This accent can also be found over any vowel. The presence of a circumflex usually signifies that an "s" used to follow that letter. For example, être used to be estre in old French. It also changes the pronunciation of the letter E from "uh" to "ehh".

The circumflex can also distinguish homonyms. Example, "du" is the contraction of "de + le", but "dû" is the past participle of the verb devoir.

Diaeresis Ë
Last but not least, there is the diaeresis, or the umlaut (I think the French call this a tremor, but I'm not sure). This can be found over any vowel, but is usually found over the vowels E, I, and O. These signify that the vowel does not form a diphthong, and that it should be pronounced as a separate syllable. For example, Chloë is pronounced "Kloh - e" not "Kloh"

That completes this lesson. As always, if you have any further questions, leave them in the comments below, and I'll do my best to answer them. Until next time, à bientôt !

The 4th Avatar 23:12, April 10, 2016 (UTC)