French orthography

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Dialects and History Orthography Reforms Use of the circumflex Phonology Liaison Elision Grammar Verbs Conjugation Verb morphology Articles and determiners Adverbs Pronouns Personal Pronouns Francophonie

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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spellings of many words are derived from Latin etymologies, which has resulted in a multitude of silent letters. Nevertheless, there are rules governing French orthography which allow for a reasonable degree of accuracy when producing French words from their written forms.

Contents 1 History of French orthography 2 Alphabet 3 Diacritics 4 Words from Greek 5 French spelling reforms 6 See also

History of French orthography

The oldest known French text, the Oaths of Strasbourg, dates back to 842.

Alphabet

French is written using the 26 letters of Latin Alphabet and five diacritics or accents.

See French alphabet for details.

Diacritics

French makes use of five diacritics that can modify certain letters. Unlike in some languages, letters with diacritics are not considered to be separate letters; for example, the diacritics are ignored when alphabetizing a list of words. Further, the diacritics are often omitted from capital letters (with É being written as E, and so on), though strictly speaking, this is not considered correct.

There are no letters that always require a diacritic to produce a given sound; rather, where a given letter has multiple possible sounds, a diacritic indicates that the sound that might be expected from the context is not the one that is used.

The acute accent (l'accent aigu) "´" is only used on the letter e. It normally indicates that the vowel is pronounced [e], as in épaule (shoulder) and détail (detail), when it might otherwise be read [ɛ] or [ə]. In certain closed syllables, however, é is written while the pronunciation in most dialects is [ɛ], as in céderai (I will give up) and réglementaire (regulatory); the 1990 spelling reform (see below) declared that in these cases, è should be used instead, but this spelling reform was not widely adopted.

The grave accent (l'accent grave) "`" is used on the letter e to indicate that it is pronounced [ɛ], as in manière (way) and après (after), when it is followed by a single consonant. It is also used on the letters a and u to distinguish certain homophones, such as ou (or) and où (where), and la (the) and là (there).

The cedilla (la cédille) "¸" is only used on the letter c, and only when the c is followed by a, o, or u (possibly with a diacritic); it indicates that the c is pronounced [s] (its "soft" pronunciation, that it ordinarily only has before e and i) rather than [k] (its "hard" pronunciation, that it ordinarily has elsewhere).

The circumflex (l'accent circonflexe) "^" can be used on any of the letters a, e, i, o, and u. It does not affect the pronunciation of i or u (except to lengthen them in dialects that retain the distinction between long and short vowels), and does not affect the pronunciation of a in most dialects (though in some, it changes [a] to [ɑ]). On o, it changes [ɔ] to [o], and on e, it produces [ɛ] (duplicating the function of the grave accent). The circumflex is chiefly a historical accent; it was added in the 19th century to certain words with an unpronounced s (e.g. forest → forêt) or another unpronounced letter (e.g. aage → âge).

The diaeresis (le tréma) shows that two vowels are pronounced separately (i.e., that the vowel pair is not a digraph) For example, Noël, naïf, and compare the forms of the verb haïr [aiʁ] (je hais [ɛ], nous haïssons [aisɔ̃]). It is normally written on the second vowel. It is also added above the feminine adjectival ending -e when the masculine form ends in -gu: aigu, ambigu → aiguë, ambiguë. The same practice is not followed, however, for verbs whose stem ends in -gu. For example, the verb arguer has exactly the same forms as targuer (without the inital t-), even though the two verbs are pronounced very differently ([aʁgɥe] vs. [taʁge], j'argue [ʒaʁgy] vs. je targue [ʒətaʁg]).

Words from Greek

French words of Greek origin are unusually complicated due to a number digraphs. The digraphs <ph>, <th>, and <ch> are normally pronounced /f/, /t/, and /k/ in Greek loanwords, respectively; and the digraphs <ae> and <oe> are generally pronounced in Greek loanwords as though they were <e>.

French spelling reforms

Main article: Reforms of French orthography.

See also

• French phonology
• Elision (French)
• Use of the circumflex in French
• Spelling
• Punctuationfr:Orthographe française

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