Quatrième Partie: L’alphabet et la phonétique / Explication de grammaire
La phonétique
Les accents
The acute accent (´), l’accent aigu, and the grave accent (`), l’accent grave, are used to indicate the quality of the vowel sound represented by the letter e.
A. Listen to each example and repeat.
| é /e/ |
| année |
| Répétez! |
| André |
| è /ɛ/ |
| très |
| après |
| Michèle |
When used with letters other than e, the accent grave does not indicate a sound difference but serves to distinguish different words which have the same spelling but different meanings.
| ou (or) | où (where) |
| la date (the date) | là (there) |
| il y a (there is/are) | à l’heure (on time) |
The circumflex (ˆ), l’accent circonflexe, arose historically as a marker for vowels which were followed by another letter (usually s) in an earlier state of the language:
être (<estre) hôtel (<hostel) forêt (<forest) plaît (<plaist)
The cedilla (ç), la cédille, is used only with the letter c to indicate the sound /s/ when it is followed by the letters a, o, or u:
Ça va? /sa/ cahier /ka/
The cedilla is not used with the letters e and i:
| Ce | merci |
| c’est | ici |
The dieresis (¨), le tréma, is used with vowels to indicate that they are pronounced separately from a preceding vowel:
| Noël | naïf | Loïc |
