French alphabet

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The French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures.

Letter names

Letter	Name	Phonetic transcription (IPA)	Diacritics and ligatures
A	a	/ɑ/	Àà, Ââ, Ææ
B	bé	/be/
C	cé	/se/	Çç
D	dé	/de/
E	e	/ə/	Éé, Èè, Êê, Ëë
F	effe	/ɛf/
G	gé	/ʒe/
H	hache	/aʃ/
I	i	/i/	Îî, Ïï
J	ji	/ʒi/
K	ka	/kɑ/
L	elle	/ɛl/
M	emme	/ɛm/
N	enne	/ɛn/
O	o	/o/	Ôô, Œœ
P	pé	/pe/
Q	qu	/ky/
R	erre	/ɛʁ/
S	esse	/ɛs/
T	té	/te/
U	u	/y/	Ùù, Ûû, Üü
V	vé	/ve/
W	double vé	/dubləve/
X	ixe	/iks/
Y	i grec	/iɡʁɛk/	Ÿÿ
Z	zède	/zɛd/

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"). 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.
• 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): Over c, Indicates that an etymological c is pronounced /s/ when it would otherwise be pronounced /k/. Thus je lance "I throw" (with c = [s] before e), je lançais "I was throwing" (c would be pronounced [k] 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 and 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.).

Ligatures

The two ligatures œ and æ have orthographic value. For determining alphabetical order, these ligatures are treated like the sequences oe and ae.

Œ

(French: e dans l'o or o, e collés/liés) This ligature is a mandatory contraction of ⟨oe⟩ in certain words. Some of these are native French words, with the pronunciation /œ/ or /ø/, e.g. sœur "sister" /sœʁ/, œuvre "work (of art)" /œvʁ/. Note that it usually appears in the combination œu; œil is an exception. Many of these words were originally written with the digraph eu; the o in the ligature represents a sometimes artificial attempt to imitate the Latin spelling: Latin bovem > Old French buef/beuf > Modern French bœuf.

Œ is also used in words of Greek origin, as the Latin rendering of the Greek diphthong οι, e.g. cœlacanthe "coelacanth". These words used to be pronounced with the vowel /e/, but in recent years a spelling pronunciation with /ø/ has taken hold, e.g. œsophage /ezɔfaʒ/ or /øzɔfaʒ/. The pronunciation with /e/ is often seen to be more correct.

The ligature œ is not used in some occurrences of the letter combination ⟨oe⟩, for example, when ⟨o⟩ is part of a prefix (coexister), or when e is part of a suffix (minoen), or in the word moelle and its derivatives.

Æ

(French: e dans l'a or a, e collés/liés) This ligature is rare, appearing only in some words of Latin and Greek origin like tænia, ex æquo, cæcum, æthyse (as named dog’s parsley). It generally represents the vowel /e/, like ⟨é⟩.

The sequence ⟨ae⟩ appears in loanwords as if maestro and paella.

Notes

• Letters ⟨w⟩ and ⟨k⟩ are rarely used except in loan words or regional words; the /w/ sound is written ⟨ou⟩, the /k/ sound is usually written ⟨c⟩ (anywhere but before ⟨e, i⟩, ⟨qu⟩ (before ⟨e, i⟩) (⟨que⟩ is written in the ends of words that in English end with a ⟨c⟩. Examples: scientifique (scientific), spécifique (specific).), or ⟨cqu⟩. The letter ⟨q⟩ appears more frequently than in English.
• The vowels are ⟨a, e, i, o, u, y⟩.

See also

• Latin-derived alphabet
• French orthography

External links

• Recording of 3 different voices pronouncing the French alphabet
• Online editor for typing French accents
• French alphabet pronounced by a native speaker (youtube)