Note 3: When a “ou/où” confusion is highly possible during a conversation, French speakers tend to turn “ou” into “ou alors”. Note 2: Où is the only word containing ( ù ). Note 1: do not mistake the English article “a” (“un”/”une” in French) for the French “a/à”.Īlthough, English and French having waltzed and exchanged lexical genes so profusely over centuries, it is with no surprise that traces of the French “à” can be found in some English prepositions : Tricky, hey? But hold on, you haven’t even seen half of it yet. On Sundays, he goes to the restaurant, or he just drinks coffee. Le Dimanche, il va au restaurant, ou il boit juste un café. On Sundays, he goes to the restaurant where he just drinks coffee. Le Dimanche, il va au restaurant où il boit juste un café. On U and A this accent is mainly there to help distinguish words spelled identically and give a different role in the sentence (no change of pronunciation involved). È is just as much of a tortured mind as É.īelow is something I concocted to relieve everyone’s confusion.Ībove A and U ( À / Ù ): semantico-grammatical intricacies
HOW TO GET A E WITH AN ACCENT MARK ON IT FREE
You probably won’t believe your eyes as you’ll read the following: the grave accent is both easy to pronounce and free from any semantico-grammatical intricacies!Īnd you’d be right. Where you’ll find it: L’accent grave appears on three vowels: à, ù, è. Push “e” and the “option” key simultaneously, release both keys then press “e” again.ĭone! You now master the infamous É.
Omitting to hit the space bar would produce this result: “jái”. To avoid that, you’ll have to press the space bar in between the 2 aforementioned keys.Įxample: to type “j’ai”, you’ll have to push (J) (‘) (space bar) (a) (i). Mainly, when you’ll want to type quote/single quote (” / ’), if followed by a vowel, it will automatically accentuate it. However, there will be a couple of differences you’ll need to adjust to. It allows you to keep the best of both worlds: keeps your keyboard as a normal QWERTY while making it easier for you to type accent marks. Besides buying an AZERTY keyboard, installing this is probably your best option out there. Note: The United States-International Keyboard isn’t a physical keyboard, it’s a keyboard setting. Simply put, it’s the equivalent of the suffix ( -ed ) in English in its past participle/adjective usage, but not it’s simple past one: Good news: in many words, ( é ) doesn’t have any other function than a phonetic one.īad news: in many other words, ( é ) possesses a grammatical function. But believe me, to ace your essay, those aren’t what you’ll want to rely on.) Grammatical function (Rules do exist though – we’ll see some in a later section.
Mastering this pronunciation will be critical for your future French spelling endeavors, as it will be your best shot at distinguishing é, è and e. This way, you will accustom your vocal cords to saying a crisp, pure French ( é ) without any ( i ) piggybacking it. Say Cafebruary (café + February, removing the “fé”part) a few times, then say it again but stop at ( é ), don’t pronounce “bruary”. Pronounced the English way, these words fail to sound French the microsecond the ( i ) sound leaves our oral cavity. Nor is it, like some suggest, pronounced AY as in Tray or Parlay. Warning: don’t let acutely accentuated French loanwords fool you – (é) is NOT pronounced like in Café and Résumé in English. “é” is pronounced like the “e” in “ elementary” (not “ee” as in “ ebook” or “e” as in “hot el”). Changing the meaning and grammatical function of a word.Changing the pronunciation of the letter “e”.The ( é ) serves 2 unfortunately-not-so-distinct purposes: Where you’ll find it: that one’s fussy it only hovers over the letter “E”.ĭid someone say rules? French acute accent ( é ) essential rules How the French call it: L’accent aigu (“AXAN TÉGU”) Oh, but before anything, some de rigueur facts. That having been said, let’s jump into it. Tout ça pour dire que (all this to say that), one: taming ( é ) isn’t a walk in the park, but the day you’ll have done so, you’ll earn my people’s eternal respect and two : when it comes to spelling, trust books and some of the rules you’re about to learn, but not your French pen pal’s 3 a.m. I’m a post-grad native French speaker, and yet I need to triple-check anything I write in French for these huge tiny little ( é ) oversights.Ĭonfusions between ( é ) and other spellings keeping in their wallet the same phonetic ID ( ai, ait, aie, est, et, er) are probably the most common species of spelling mistakes you’ll see on any average French person’s Facebook or Instagram timeline, let alone comment section. Its pronunciation isn’t that hard, but gosh do we hate that one, we the raconteurs, the expressive, when comes the time to stop the chatters and open the chatrooms.
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