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The French alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. It uses the standard 26 letters. The words in the column "Letter name in French" are sometimes used when discussing the letters (compare English words such as "aitch").
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Letter names
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Letter Pronunciation A /ɑ/ ah B /be/ bay C /se/ say D /de/ day E /ə/ euh F /ɛf/ eff G /ʒe/ zhay H /aʃ/ ash I /i/ ee J /ʒi/ zhee K /ka/ kah L /ɛl/ ell M /ɛm/ emm N /ɛn/ enn O /o/ oh P /pe/ pay Q /ky/ cue R /ɛʁ/ air S /ɛs/ ess T /te/ tay U /y/ ooo V /ve/ vay W /dublə ve/ doobla-veh X /iks/ ix Y /i grɛk/ ee grek Z /zɛd/ zed
La nouvelle épellation
In la nouvelle épellation system, the consonant letters were read as follows: be, ke, de, fe, gue, he, je, ke, le, me, ne, pe, ke, re, se, te, ve, we, kse, ze. Though more phonetically based than the traditional system, it never took hold.[1]
Ligatures
Special ligatures exist for some words:
Notes
- 'W' and 'K' are rarely used except in loan words or regional words, 'ou' is used to represent the /w/ sound; while 'Q' appears more frequently than in English.
- vowels are A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y;
- semi-vowels are Y, rarely W (except regionally, for instance in Belgium);
- usual diacritic marks are acute ( ´ ), grave ( ` ), circumflex ( ˆ ), diaeresis (called tréma in French) ( ¨ ), and the cedilla ( ¸ ). The only possible combinations are: à â ç é è ê ë î ï ô û ù ü ÿ. Diacritics have no impact on the primary alphabetical order.
- the tilde diacritical mark ( ˜ ), used only above n, is occasionally used with the French alphabet, for well-known proper names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated in the language (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"[2], except for acronyms but not for abbreviations (e.g. CEE, ALENA, but É.-U.)[3].
See also
References
- ^ Grevisse, Maurice (1980). Le Bon Usage: Grammaire française avec des Remarques sur la langue française d'aujourd'hui (11th ed. ed.). Paris-Gembloux: Duculot. ISBN 2-8011-0242-3.
- ^ Académie française, http://www.academie-francaise.fr/langue/questions.html#accentuation
- ^ Banque de dépannage linguistique from the Office québécois de la langue française, http://66.46.185.79/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?t1=1&id=1438
External links
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