paris image church for spell and sound Have you ever wondered what all the dashes, the dots and the little hat symbols above French letters mean? In this article we will be exploring the four French accents; accent grave, accent aigue (acute), circumflex and trèma.

French Accents Grave and Aigue

No, I don’t mean the kind from “Allo Allo” the (old) British sitcom. I mean the small dash that is found above certain letters in written French.

These two accents can be found on a variety of letters including the letters “a”, “u” and “e” but it’s the accents on the letter “e” that causes the most phonetic confusion for English speakers.

It’s important to note that either accent (aigue or grave) above the letter “e” will change the sound of the letter “e”.

Your French Chart demonstrates the differences between these letters.

Take a look at these two sound boxes for eight and bed.

Notice the words blé and dès and listen their sounds. To a French person the difference is enormous, for myself, I still need to concentrate to hear it sometimes but the accent on the letter “e” does change the sound depending on which way it’s facing.

Brain Buster: I remember the difference between the two in this way;
Accent Grave goes to bed and touches “e” on the right. So the grave accent represents the sound in bed and the accent itself slopes down from top left to bottom right of the letter “e”. Although technically they do not touch each other.

You only need to remember one accent because the other is the exact opposite. The other accent here is accent aigue and has the eight sound. The English word “eight” does not represent the true French sound. To make the true [e] sound you must say the short version of the eigh in eight. Luckily, the accents acute and grave on the letter E are discussed in more detail with a short video, if you’d like to know more.

French Accents and Change of Meaning

Accent grave can also be used to denote a change of meaning for words that are spelled the same (homophones). For example, the letter “a”, the past participle of avoir, becomes à meaning “to” or “in” with a simple accent grave, which completely changes it’s meaning.

You might also find accent grave above the letter “u” most commonly recognised in où meaning “where” as opposed to “ou” meaning “or”. In these cases the accent grave does not change the sound of the letter.

Circumflex

If you’ve been learning written French then you have definitely come across these little hats above French vowels;

Most experts agree that these circumflex symbols;

Indicate that there has been a historical change to the word
Distinguish between two words that have the same sound and sometimes spelling (homophone)
Changes the sound

Historical Changes

What’s a forest without an “s”? A forêt, of course!

You might notice the lack of the letter “s” and circumflex symbol above the letter “e”, in the French version of the word forest. The circumflex seems to stick to which ever vowel would have been closest to the letter if it were still there. You can find many French words with a hatted vowel in place of the letter “s”. The letter “s” is the most commonly replaced consonant but other letter have also been replaced over the years.

Words with the same spellings but different meanings

Often called homophones, they are tricky for beginners because without some sort of “context” you cannot tell their meaning but in French, circumflex symbols come to the rescue.

For example dû, the past participle of devoir looks very similar to du, the combination of de+le but its circumflex that makes the word identifiable on it’s own.

Just like accent grave on the letters “a” and “u”, the circumflex does not change the vowel sound when it’s over the letters “u” and “i”.

Changing vowel sounds

There is debate among many French phonetic experts that the accent circumflex doesn’t change the sound of the vowel, now I’m not an expert in the field but I have noticed that when this little hat is above the vowels a, and o, the sound appears to be longer, with the sound of the ê becoming short like the sound in bed. Your Spell and Sound French Chart illustrates this point.

The below images are extracts of the Spell and Sound French Chart with Examples to demonstrate the vowel sound each letter makes when it has a circumflex accent.

circumflex o french example circumflex a french example circumflex e french example

Trèma

Two little dots above the vowels E I U make up the the accent trèma. These little symbols indicate that the vowel it sits above and the one next to it, must be sounded individually, so they are not part of a group.

For example the word naïve would sound very different without the trèma accent.