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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spellings of many words are derived from Latin etymologies, which has resulted in a multitude of silent letters. Nevertheless, there are rules governing French orthography which allow for a reasonable degree of accuracy when producing French words from their written forms. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ...
Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS...
Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...
This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ...
The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ...
Proper spelling is the writing of a word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted, conventional order. ...
The term punctuation has two different linguistic meanings: in general, the act and the effect of punctuating, i. ...
In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ...
Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the words pronunciation. ...
History of French orthography
The oldest known French text, the Oaths of Strasbourg, dates back to 842. Text of the Oaths The Oaths of Strasbourg (Modern French: les serments de Strasbourg, Modern German: die Straßburger Eide) is the name by which we know the pledges of allegiance taken in 842 by Louis the German, son of Louis the Pious, and ruler of the eastern Frankish kingdom...
Events Oaths of Strasbourg — alliance of Louis the German and Charles the Bald against emperor Lothar — sworn and recorded in vernacular languages. ...
Alphabet French is written using the 26 letters of Latin Alphabet and five diacritics or accents. The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...
A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ...
- See French alphabet for details.
The French alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. ...
Accents The acute accent (l'accent aigu) "´" is only used on the letter e. It normally indicates that the vowel is pronounced [e] instead of the defaults [ɛ] or [ə] (e.g., épaule, détail). In certain closed syllables, however, é is written while the pronunciation in most dialects is [ɛ] (e.g., céderai (the first-person future of céder), réglementaire). The elimination of these exceptions was one of the goals of the 1990 spelling reform.
The grave accent (l'accent grave) "`" is used to indicate the pronunciation [ɛ] of the letter e, usually before a single consonant (e.g. manière. après.
The cedilla (la cédille) "¸" is used to indicate the "soft" pronunciation of the letter c [s] in front of a, o, or u (without the cedilla before those vowels c has the "hard" pronunciation [k]}) (e.g., façade).
The circumflex (l'accent circonflexe) "^" shows that an e is pronounced [ɛ] (doubling the function of the grave accent) and that an o is pronounced [o] instead of [ɔ]. In some dialects, â represents the vowel [ɑ], but this vowel has merged with [a] in most varieties. In dialects that retain a distinction between short and long vowels, the circumflex often indicates the long form of a vowel. The circumflex is chiefly a historical accent; it was added in the 19th century to certain words with an unpronounced s (e.g. forest -> forêt) or another unpronounced letter (e.g. aage -> âge).
The diaeresis (le tréma) shows that two vowels are pronounced separately (i.e., that the vowel pair is not a digraph) (e.g., Noël, naïve). In linguistics, a, diaeresis, or dieresis (AE) (from Greek (diaerein), to divide) is the modification of a syllable by distinctly pronouncing one of its vowels. ...
Digraph has several meanings: Directed graph, or digraph Digraph (orthography) Digraph (computing) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
French spelling reforms - Main article: Reforms of French orthography.
The orthography of French was already more or less fixed, and from a phonological point of view outdated, when its lexicography developed in the late 17th century and the Académie française was mandated to establish an official prescriptive norm. ...
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