You have been studying French for quite some time now…and you are doing such a fabulous job! However, if you are seated at the fancy French restaurant you have always wanted to try, and the waiter hands you a menu – completely in French – it could be quite confusing!

The French alphabet is pretty peculiar and a bit different from the English writing system. It includes some unfamiliar markings you may not recognize:

1) Diacritics, or accent marks that help denote the characteric French pronunciation and intonation of words. They include:

• The acute accent (l’accent aigu)             ‹´›
• The grave accent (l’accent grave)          ‹`›
• The cedilla (la cédille)                               ‹¸›
• The circumflex (l’accent circonflexe)     ‹ˆ›
• The diaeresis (le tréma)                           ‹¨›

2) Ligatures (æ and œ), which are obligatory contractions of ae and oe in certain French words (as in sœur, meaning “sister”)

Now, you may ask yourself why the need for these markings ?

It was actually  during the 16th century that accents began to appear. With the invention of the printing press, printers looked for ways to eliminate ambiguity and redundant letters. The solution to these problems was the use of accents and other markings. For example,before the cedilla was introduced, the soft “c” was printed as –ce-, –ss-, –ch– or just –c-.

So, the point of these accents is to clarify pronunciation and reading. Although at first it may seem confusing, the French writing system is like a map, so if you think about it this way and understand these ‘directions’, you will keep on your journey through French learning without missing a turn!