Weren’t any accents on those first two e’s, you wouldn’t necessarily They provide a way for speakers to know exactly how a letter should be pronounced.įor example, take the accent double whammy word élève. To indicate pronunciation.Īlthough it can be annoying (even for native French speakers) to have to remember to add them above a letter, accents in French are often just trying to help you out. Here are three basic reasons why the French add accents According to this source,Īccent marks over e’s started being used in the 16 th centuryĬE - so a very long time after the letter e itself appeared! Why are there accents in French?Īlthough they’re a major part of written French, accentsĬame about a lot more recently than the letters they adorn. Le tréma (diaeresis): ¨ – ëĮ with a tréma (diaeresis) means that this letter must be pronounced apart from those around it, as in the word Noël. L’accent circonflexe (circumflex) : ̑ – êĮ with an accent circonflexe might indicate that you should briefly linger on a sound, but mostly it’s a sort of monument to an older version of a word, where an s once followed the e. For example, fête used to be written and pronounced feste in Old French. L’accent grave (grave accent) : ` – èĮ with an accent grave indicates a particular pronunciation, as in the word crème. Here’s what it means when you put one of them over the letter e in French: L’accent aigu (acute accent) – éĮ with an accent aigu can indicate a particular pronunciation, or the past participle or adjective form of a verb. There are four diacritic marks that can be used with the letter e in French. Often, you’ll see an accent (also known as a
Which French accents are used with the letter e?Īs you’ve probably noticed, the letter e in Frenchĭoesn’t always stand alone. Word) pr ésidente (a female president) intelligente (aįemale or feminine subject is intelligent) Simone (the feminine version of the This case, e is sometimes on its own or included in suffixes like -euse,Įxamples: une (the version of un used with a feminine Examples: jou é, écout éįeminine version of a word, an adjective or other part of speech modifying aįeminine word, or, with some names and nouns, a female being or job (in In addition to representing sounds that appear in a majority of words, another reason for its predominance in French is because the letter e is used:Įnding for regular -er verbs. The letter e is the most frequently used letter in a number of languages, including French. Trickery was involved)! Why is the letter e so
Revenentes, which used the letter e as the only vowel in Verbal acrobat (like all of his fellow Oulipo writers), a few Notorious for being written without a single e…and still being pretty French author Georges Perec’s 1969 novel La disparition is Today, it’s also been a part of many alphabets, including the first known one, created by theĮ is a useful letter, of course, but some people have It actually evolved from anĮgyptian hieroglyphic! In its journey to the letter we know and use so much
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