French orthography

The French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures. : and are used only in loanwords and regional words. is usually written ; is usually written anywhere but before , before , and sometimes at the ends of words. However, is common in the metric prefix kilo- (originally from Greek khilia "a thousand"), e.g. , , , . ==Diacritics==

The diacritics used in French orthography are the acute accent (; ), the grave accent (; ), the circumflex (; ), the diaeresis (; ), and the cedilla (; ). Diacritics have no effect on the primary alphabetical order. • An acute accent over represents . An in modern French is often used where a combination of and a consonant, usually , would have been used formerly, e.g. ← . • A grave accent over or is primarily used to distinguish homophones: ("to") vs. ("has"); ("or") vs. ("where"; note that is only used in this word). A grave accent over indicates in positions where a plain would be pronounced (schwa). Many verb conjugations contain regular alternations between and ; for example, the accent mark in the present tense verb distinguishes the vowel's pronunciation from the schwa in the infinitive, . • A circumflex over indicates , respectively, but the distinction between vs. is being lost in Parisian French, merging them as . In Belgian French, is pronounced . Most often, it indicates the historical deletion of an adjacent letter (usually or a vowel): ←, ←, ←, ← (in medieval manuscripts many letters were often written as diacritical marks, e.g. the circumflex for and the tilde for ). It has also come to be used to distinguish homophones, e.g. ("of the") vs. (past participle of "to have to do something (pertaining to an act)"); however is in fact written thus because of a dropped : deu (see Circumflex in French). Since the 1990 orthographic changes, the circumflex on and can be dropped unless it distinguishes homophones, e.g. becomes but (sure) does not change to avoid ambiguity with the word (on). • A diaeresis over indicates a hiatus between the accented vowel and the vowel preceding it, e.g. , . The diaeresis may also indicate a glide/diphthong, as in . • The combination is pronounced in the regular way if followed by ( . An exception to this is ). • The combination is either pronounced (, ) or (); it represents if it precedes ( ). • A diaeresis on only occurs in some proper names and in modern editions of old French texts, e.g. (commune in Marne, now ), (alley in the 18th arrondissement of Paris), (family name and hotel on the Boulevard Raspail, Paris), ? (near Joigny), ? (name of Flemish origin spelt where cursive looked like to French clerks), (commune between Paris and Orly airport), Pierre Louÿs (author), Eugène Ysaÿe (violinist/composer), Moÿ-de-l'Aisne (commune in Aisne and a family name), and (an insurance company in eastern France). • The diaeresis on appears in the Biblical proper names ?, (with for as in words of Latin origin such as , or chemical element names such as ), , , and , as well as French names such as Haüy . Nevertheless, since the 1990 orthographic changes, the diaeresis in words containing (such as or ) can be moved onto the : , , and by analogy may be used in verbs such as . Without a diaeresis, the would be silent (or a schwa in accents which retain one): . • In addition, words of German origin retain their umlaut () if applicable but often use French pronunciation, such as (, trademark of a pressure washer). • A cedilla under indicates that it is pronounced rather than . Thus "I throw" (with for before ), "I was throwing" ( would represent before without the cedilla). The cedilla is only used before , e.g. . A cedilla is not used before , since they already mark the as , e.g. , , . A tilde () above is occasionally used in French for words and names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated into the language (e.g., , ). 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 (not present on AZERTY keyboards). However, many authorities, including the and the , reject this usage. The states that, because accents in French have full orthographic value and their absence can lead to misreading and mispronunciation, good typography must systematically use diacritics on capital letters. There is an exception for acronyms but not for abbreviations (e.g., , , but ). Nevertheless, diacritics are often ignored in word games, including crosswords, Scrabble, and . ==Ligatures==

The ligatures and are part of French orthography. For collation, these ligatures are treated like the sequences and respectively. Æ (, or ) is rare, appearing only in some words of Latin and Greek origin like , , , (as named dog’s parsley). It generally represents the vowel , like . The sequence appears in loanwords where both sounds are heard, as in and . Œ (, or ) is a mandatory contraction of in certain words. Some of these are native French words, with the pronunciation or , e.g. "choir" , "heart" , "moods (related to moral)" , "knot" , "sister" , "egg" , "work (of art)" , "vow" . It usually appears in the combination ; "eye" is an exception. Many of these words were originally written with the digraph ; the in the ligature represents a sometimes artificial attempt to imitate the Latin spelling: > Old French / > Modern French . is also used in words of Greek origin, as the Latin rendering of the Greek diphthong , e.g. "coelacanth". These words used to be pronounced with , but in recent years a spelling pronunciation with has taken hold, e.g. or , or etc. The pronunciation with is often seen to be more correct. When is found after , the can be pronounced in some cases (), or in others (). is not used when both letters contribute different sounds. For example, when is part of a prefix (), or when is part of a suffix (), or in the word and its derivatives. ==Digraphs and trigraphs==

French digraphs and trigraphs have both historical and phonological origins. In the first case, it is a vestige of the spelling in the word's original language (usually Latin or Greek) maintained in modern French, e.g. the use of in , in , or in . In the second case, a digraph is due to an archaic pronunciation, such as , , , , and , or is merely a convenient way to expand the twenty-six-letter alphabet to cover all relevant phonemes, as in , , , , , and . Some cases are a mixture of these or are used for purely pragmatic reasons, such as for in ('he ate'), where the serves to indicate a "soft" inherent in the verb's root, similar to the significance of a cedilla to . ==Spelling to sound correspondences==

Some exceptions apply to the rules governing the pronunciation of word-final consonants. See Liaison (French) for details. Consonants Vowels } is standard in both France and Quebec, some Québécois, particularly older speakers, may use the pronunciation , especially in informal contexts.}} (in new orthography, aout) || et, pieds (and any other noun plural ending in (consonant other than t)+s) femme, solennel, fréquemment, (and other adverbs ending in -emment) Gennevilliers (see also -er)(see also ae) before silent ⟨t⟩ Vowels and consonants : These combinations are pronounced after , all but the last of which are pronounced normally and are not influenced by the . For example, in , is pronounced ; in , is pronounced . , however, which only occurs in such combinations after and , is pronounced as opposed to , e.g. , , , etc. These combinations are never pronounced after , except -- (), e.g. , , where the vowel + + sequence is pronounced normally, although as usual, the pronunciation of after and is somewhat unpredictable: , , but , etc. ==Words from Greek==

The spelling of French words of Greek origin is complicated by a number of digraphs which originated in the Latin transcriptions. The digraphs normally represent , respectively, in Greek loanwords; and the ligatures and in Greek loanwords represent the same vowel as (). Further, many words in the international scientific vocabulary were constructed in French from Greek roots and have kept their digraphs (e.g. , ). ==History==

The Oaths of Strasbourg from 842 is the earliest text written in the early form of French called Romance or Gallo-Romance. Roman The Celtic Gaulish language of the inhabitants of Gaul disappeared progressively over the course of Roman rule as the Latin language began to replace it. Vulgar Latin, a generally lower register of Classical Latin spoken by the Roman soldiers, merchants and even by patricians in quotidian speech, was adopted by the natives and evolved slowly, taking the forms of different spoken Roman vernaculars according to the region of the empire. Eventually the different forms of Vulgar Latin in what is now France evolved into three branches in the Gallo-Romance language sub-family, the north of the Loire, the in the south, and the Franco-Provençal languages in part of the east. Old French In the 9th century, the Romance vernaculars were already quite far from Latin. For example, to understand the Bible, written in Latin, footnotes were necessary. The languages found in the manuscripts dating from the 9th century to the 13th century form what is known as Old French (). With consolidation of royal power, beginning in the 13th century, the vernacular, the variety then in usage in the Île-de-France (region around Paris), took, little by little, over the other languages and evolved toward Classic French. These languages continued to evolve until Middle French () emerged, in the 14th century to the 16th century. ==Punctuation==

In France, Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, the exclamation mark, question mark, semicolon, colon, percentage mark, currency symbols, hash, and guillemet all require a thin space between the punctuation mark and the material it adjoins. Computer software may aid or hinder the application of this rule, For instance, (Square of the Battle of Stalingrad []); and (named after Blaise Pascal). Likewise, Pas-de-Calais is a French department; the eponymous (strait) is . This rule is not uniformly observed in official names, e.g., either or , and usually has no hyphens. The names of Montreal Metro stations are consistently hyphenated when suitable, but those of Paris Métro stations mostly ignore this rule. (For more examples, see Trait d'union.) ==See also==