French Grammar: Orthographic Accent

Definition: There are five different kinds of accent marks used in written French. They are:

ACCENT	LETTERS USED	EXAMPLES
acute accent (accent aigu)	é only	éléphant: elephant
grave accent (accent grave)	è, à, ù	fièvre: fever, là, there où: where
circumflex (accent circonflexe)	â, ê, î, ô, û	gâteau: cake, être: to be, île: island, chômage: unemployment, dû: past participle of devoir
diaeresis (tréma)	ë, ï, ü, ÿ	Noël: Christmas, maïs: corn, aigüe: acute(fem)
cedilla (cédille)	ç only	français: French

Note: As of the spelling reform of 1990, the diaresis indicating gu is not a digraph on words finishing in guë is now placed on the u in standard (AKA "académie française" French): aigüe and not aiguë, cigüe and not ciguë, ambigüe and not ambiguë (acute(fem), conium, ambiguous). Since this reform is relatively recent and not known in vulgar surrounding, both spellings can be used interchangeably.

Note: The letter ÿ is only used in very rare words, most old town names: L'Haÿ-Les-Roses (Paris surburb). Pronounced like ï.

Acute Accent:

The acute accent is the most common accent used in written French. It is only used with the letter e and is always pronounced e.
One use of the acute accent is to form the past participle of regular -er verbs.

INFINITIVE	PAST PARTICIPLE
aimer, to love	aimé, loved
regarder, to watch	regardé, watched

Examples in French:

étable --> stable (for horses)
école --> scole --> school
il étudie --> il studie --> he studies

And to combine what you already know about the accent aigu, here is one last example:

étranglé (from étrangler) --> stranglé --> strangled

Grave Accent:

à and ù:
In the case of the letters à and ù, the grave accent is used to graphically distinguish one word from another.

WITHOUT (ACCENT GRAVE)	WITH (ACCENT GRAVE)
a (3º Pers. sing of avoir , to have)	à (preposition, to, at, et al.)
la (definite article for feminine nouns)	là ( there )
ou (conjunction, or )	où ( where )

è
Unlike à and ù, è is not used to distinguish words from one another. The è used for pronunciation. In careful speech, an unaccented e is pronounced euh, and in rapid speech is sometimes not pronounced at all. The è is pronounced like the letter e in pet.

Tonic Accent:

In English, you stress certain syllables more than others. However in French, you pronounce each syllable evenly.