French alphabet and pronunciation

About this course

Cardinal Richelieu set up the Académie française in the 1630s, and letters patent made it official in 1635. Its first task, the preface of its dictionary says, was a dictionary of the French language, and the first edition came out in 1694, sixty years later. The ninth edition was finished in November 2024, with more than 53,000 entries, 21,000 of them new since the eighth edition of 1935. The Académie does not invent spelling rules on its own; it records usage and makes recommendations. French spelling looks hard, but it works better in the reading direction than people expect.

The seven units cover the alphabet, where g and j swap names as zhé and zhee, then accent marks, vowels, nasal vowels, consonants, silent letters, and liaison and elision. The circumflex in forêt marks an s that French dropped centuries ago, kept in English forest. Tu and tout differ by one vowel, and vin, vent and vont differ only by nasal vowel, with no n sound at the end. The h in hôtel is never pronounced, yet the aspirated h in héros stops les from linking: otherwise les héros would sound like les zéros. Il parle and ils parlent sound exactly the same, and les amis is said lay-za-mee.

Spelling carries history. Oi was once pronounced close to oy, then the sound shifted to the wa heard today while the spelling stayed. Doigt received its g from Latin digitus. A short list of exceptions comes with the reliable rules, and femme, pronounced fam, is the first most learners meet. In 1990 the Académie approved spelling adjustments, published on 6 December 1990, and French schools have taught the adjusted forms as the reference since 2008.