Lesson 1.1: The French Script

Welcome to the first real lesson of the French course! In this lesson, we will dive into the basic elements of the French script: letters, accent marks, and punctuation.

You don’t need to memorize the information in this lesson unless you really want to. As you learn vocabulary, you’ll get used to all the characters and sounds of the language. This lesson is just here to help you be aware of all the building blocks of French that you’ll be using in the future.

Letters

French uses the same 26-letter alphabet as English (called the Latin alphabet). A few of the letters have different sounds in French than in English, but they’re mostly the same. Here’s a table of the letters, their French names, and their French pronunciations denoted with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

As you can see, there are only seven letters with totally different pronunciations in French: E, H, I, J, Q, R, and U. The others can usually be pronounced like in English.

Accent marks

Accent marks (“accents” for short) are little symbols that are placed above or below letters to change their pronunciation or to distinguish words that are spelled the same. English doesn’t use accent marks, but most other Latin-alphabet languages do, including French.

There are five accent marks in French:

1. Acute accent (é): changes E from /ə/ to /e/

   Examples: étudier (to study), cassé (broken), clé, (key)

2. Grave accent: changes E from /ə/ to /ɛ/; doesn’t change pronunciation for A and U

   Examples: là (there), près (near), où (where)

   Fun fact: où is the only word in French that uses ù with a grave accent

3. Circumflex (ê): forces a short pronunciation of A and E; forces a tight, round-mouthed pronunciation of O; doesn’t change pronunciation of I and U

   Examples: château (palace), arrêter (to stop), hôpital (hospital)

4. Dieresis (ë): forces E, I, or U to be pronounced separately from any bordering vowels

   Examples: Noël (Christmas) vs. Noel, Haïti (Haiti) vs. Haiti, Saül (a given name) vs. Saul

5. Cedilla (ç): changes C from /k/ to /s/

   Examples: français (French), garçon (boy), ça (this/that)

And here’s a table of all the accents and the letters they go with:

The OE ligature (œ)

French also uses one ligature, or combination of two letters into one character. Certain words contain an O and an E squished together to form Œ/œ, pronounced /ə/.

Punctuation

French mostly uses the same punctuation rules as English, but there are a few differences. Here some of the most important ones:

• Angle quotes (« ») are the French equivalent of quotation marks.

  Example: « Arrêtez-vous ! » il a crié. (“Stop!” he yelled.)

• Question marks, exclamation marks, colons, semicolons, angle quotes, and a few other punctuation marks are typically preceded by a space.

  Example: Tu écoutes le rock ? J’adore le rock ! (Are you listening to rock music? I love rock music!)

• Commas are used instead of periods in decimal numbers.

  Example: 3,14 (3.14)

And that’s it! Now you’ve seen all of the components of French text, including letters, accent marks, the OE ligature, and the basics of punctuation. Here’s an example passage that combines all the elements in this lesson: see if you can recognize what you’ve learned!

Un jour après l’école, j’ai aperçu quelque chose de grand et de marron tombant du ciel. Je suis allée investiguer, et j’ai trouvé tous mes profs se cachant soupçonneusement dans la forêt à côté de l’école ! Je leur ai demandé, « Excusez-moi, qu’est-ce que vous faites ici ? » « Quel âge as-tu ? » le prof de science a dit. Quand je lui ai dit que j’avais dix-huit ans, il a dit, « Surement tu es trop vieille pour être naïve, alors il faut que tu saches déjà la vérité. Je suis secrètement Papa Noël. Moi, ma sœur et les autres profs nous sommes en train d’aider les cerfs de pluie à s’entraîner pour voler. Dans 8,25 mois, ils pourront voler la nuit avant Noël. Mais ne dis ça à personne ! »