#Keystrokes for accents french how to#
Now that you know how to use the five French accent marks, how can you easily type them on a computer? Using a Mac International Keyboard You will also hear this often in the daily greeting, ça va? (How are you?)Īnd then there’s the infamous garçon (boy/waiter)! How to Type French Accent Marks Parlez-vous français? (Do you speak French?) The cédille is used to give the can s sound instead of a hard ksound-for example leçon (lesson) or français (the French language). This little guy, the cédille, is present in other languages like Portuguese and Catalan, but in French, it only goes under the letter c as so: ç. La C édille - Cedilla ( ¸ )Įnfin! (At last!) We made it to the thumb, or the little tail as it’s commonly nicknamed. Think of the English word “coincidence,” which is actually pronounced “co-inn.” Coincidence is a French word, but in French it’s spelled coïncidence. Usually, the ¨ is placed above the second of two consecutive vowels. It is used when two vowels are next to each other and both must be pronounced, as in naïve, a word English has borrowed from the French, without the tréma. You know those two little dots that you sometimes see hovering above an e, i or u? That’s the tréma. For example: With CircumflexĪnd, just to keep you on your feet, there are a few French words that use the little hat simply to give the word more prestige. This is when you want to make sure that it is worn correctly. Think of it like a kind of gravestone that pays tribute to the original Latin version of the word.Īside from these, the circumflex has a more important job when it is used to distinguish between words with different meanings. With the word forêt (forest), the accent indicates that an s once followed the vowel, as it does in the identical English word “forest,” but over time was dropped. Sometimes the circumflex is used as a marker to reference the old spelling of a word. You’ll probably run into the little hat if you travel and stay at a hôtel (pronounced more or less like owe-tel, and almost identical to the English “hotel” without the “h”). The second thing is that there really aren’t that many words in French that wear the circumflex. In fact, there are some language reform groups who are in favor of getting rid of it.
There are two good things about this accent that you will want to take note of. The first is its effect on pronunciation is so slight you won’t need to worry. That’s easy to remember, isn’t it? This cute little hat goes on the a, e, i, o and u ( â, ê, î, ô, û). L’accent circonflexe, or circumflex, is also called the hat or le petit chapeau (little hat). On the a and u, it helps distinguish between words that are spelled the same: With Graveģ. However, it only changes the pronunciation of the letter e.
One clever way to remember the difference between the grave and its mirror image the aigu is to think of the English word “grave,” as in “I’m digging my own grave here.” The accent mark goes down, into the grave. When the aigu is used at the beginning of a word, it often indicates that an s used to follow that vowel, for example étudiant (student) or étudier (to study):Ī student who studies at the school. The aigu is placed on the end of a word to indicate that the letter e is pronounced like ay, as in marché (market), or parlé (spoken) or the place you’ve probably already visited several times this week, café. Think of eggs or a tasty French omelette to help you remember this rule. The accent aigu looks like this: ´ , a little apostrophe-like mark that floats up into the sky (é).
#Keystrokes for accents french pdf#
This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. Let’s take a look at all of the French accent marks, followed by creative ways to type French accent marks on English keyboards. This obviously begs the question- how do we type these symbols? See that little appendage on the “c?” It’s an accent mark, and it makes a huge difference in French pronunciation. How to Type French Accent Marks on Any Deviceīonjour, je veux apprendre le français.
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