Sons et lettres: A Pronunciation Method for Intermediate-level French

21 ACCENT TRIVIA Sometimes referred to as “the tombstone of a dead letter,” the circumflexwas introduced in the eighteenth century tomark the place where a letter s was dropped from the spelling because it was no longer pronounced. The English forms of these French words often retain the written s and its sound, as in hôpital, honnête, forêt , and château [castle]. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FRENCH AND ENGLISH Accent Marks Accent marks, also known as diacritical marks, are important features of written French that distinguish it fromEnglish. They have two basic functions: meaning, and pronunciation. Meaning. The first function affects writing only and not the sound of the word, and it is limited to a few cases: accent marks distinguish different meanings of words that otherwise have the same spelling and pronunciation. The most common cases are a/à , ou/où , and du/dû . The accent grave distinguishes the preposition à from the verb avoir (as in, elle a ), and the word where [ où ] from the word or [ ou ]; the circumflex distinguishes the partitive article du (as in du pain [some bread]) from the past participle of the verb devoir (as in, il a dû partir [he had to leave]). In these cases, the pronunciation of each word in the pair is the same. Pronunciation . The second and most common function of accent marks is to signal a particular pronunciation, most often the pronunciation of a vowel. In this context, accent marks should be considered to be part of the grapheme. Historically, these marks were introduced into French because the original Latin alphabet did not have enough characters to represent accurately and unambiguously the number of vowel sounds in French as it evolved, especially those sounds represented by the letter e . Accent marks were added to a letter to expand the basic sound palette for that letter, if you will. The following chart lists the accent marks used in French and describes their applications and effects on pronunciation.