French Alphabet - Diacritics

Diacritics

The usual diacritic marks are the acute ( ´ ), grave ( ` ), and circumflex ( ˆ ) accents, the diaeresis (French: tréma) ( ¨ ), and the cedilla ( ¸ ). Diacritics have no impact on the primary alphabetical order.

• Acute accent (é): Over e, indicates the sound of a short ai in English, with no diphthong. An é in modern French is often used where a combination of e and a consonant, usually s, would have been used formerly: écouter < escouter. This type of accent mark is called accent aigu in French.
• Grave accent (à, è, ù): Over a or u, used primarily to distinguish homophones: à ("to") vs. a ("has"), ou ("or") vs. où ("where", note that ù exists only in this word). Over an e, indicates the sound /ɛ/.
• Circumflex (â, ê, î, ô, û): Over a, e or o, indicates the sound /ɑ/, /ɛ/ or /o/, respectively (the distinction a /a/ vs. â /ɑ/ tends to disappear in many dialects). Most often indicates the historical deletion of an adjacent letter (usually an s or a vowel): château < castel, fête < feste, sûr < seur, dîner < disner. It has also come to be used to distinguish homophones: du ("of the") vs. dû (past participle of devoir "to have to do something (pertaining to an act)"; note that dû is in fact written thus because of a dropped e: deu). (See Use of the circumflex in French) Since the 1990 orthographic rectifications, the circumflex on most i and u may be dropped as there is no change in pronunciation, and it does not serve to distinguish homophones.
• Diaeresis or tréma (ë, ï, ü, ÿ): Over e, i, u or y, Indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël. A diaeresis on y only occurs in some proper names and in modern editions of old French texts. Some proper names in which ÿ appears include Aÿ (commune in canton de la Marne formerly Aÿ-Champagne), Rue des Cloÿs (alley in the 18th arrondissement of Paris), Croÿ (family name and hotel on the Boulevard Raspail, Paris), Château du Feÿ (near Joigny), Ghÿs (name of Flemish origin spelt Ghijs where ij in handwriting looked like ÿ to French clerks), L'Haÿ-les-Roses (commune between Paris and Orly airport), Pierre Louÿs (author), Moÿ (place in commune de l'Aisne and family name), and Le Blanc de Nicolaÿ (an insurance company in eastern France). The diaeresis on u appears only in the biblical proper names Archélaüs, Capharnaüm, Emmaüs, Ésaü and Saül. Nevertheless, since the 1990 orthographic rectifications, the diaeresis in words containing guë (such as aiguë or ciguë) may be moved onto the u: aigüe, cigüe. In addition, words coming from German retain the old Umlaut (ä, ö and ü) if applicable but use French pronunciation, such as Kärcher (trade mark of a pressure washer).
• Cedilla (ç): Under c, Indicates that an etymological c is pronounced /s/ when it would otherwise be pronounced /k/. Thus je lance "I throw" (with c = before e), je lançais "I was throwing" (c would be pronounced before a without the cedilla). The c cedilla (ç) softens the hard /k/ sound to /s/ before the vowels a, o or u, for example ça /sa/. C cedilla is never used before the vowels e or i since these two vowels always produce a soft /s/ sound (ce, ci).

The tilde diacritical mark ( ˜ ), used only above n, is occasionally used with the French alphabet, for well-known names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated in the language (e.g., cañon, El Niño). Like the other diacritics, the tilde has no impact on the primary alphabetical order.

Diacritics are often omitted on capital letters, mainly for technical reasons. It is widely believed that they are not required; however both the Académie française and the Office québécois de la langue française reject this usage and confirm that "in French, the accent has full orthographic value", except for acronyms but not for abbreviations (e.g. CEE, ALENA, but É.-U.). Nevertheless, diacritics are often ignored in word games, including crosswords, Scrabble, and Des chiffres et des lettres.