Accent marks

The circumflex in forêt marks an s that French dropped centuries ago: English kept it in forest.

French uses five marks on letters, and none of them shows stress in the English sense. Some change the sound of a vowel, some separate two vowels, and some only tell apart two words that would otherwise look the same. The Académie française insists that they are part of the spelling, not decoration: in its words, the accent has full orthographic value, and leaving it out slows reading and can mislead. The same goes for capitals, so the Académie recommends writing É, À and Ç on capital letters too.

Acute and grave

The acute accent (accent aigu) leans to the right and appears only on e: é. It gives a closed sound, close to the start of English say but without the glide: café, été (summer), école (school), étudiant (student). The grave accent (accent grave) leans to the left. On e it gives an open sound, like the e in English bed: père (father), mère (mother), très (very). Compare the two e sounds in élève (pupil): the first is closed, the second open.

On a and u the grave accent does not change the sound at all. It only separates words. A without an accent is a form of the verb avoir (il a, he has), while à is a preposition (à Paris, in Paris). La is the article the, là means there. Ou means or and où means where; the word où is the only French word written with ù.

The circumflex

The circumflex (accent circonflexe) looks like a little roof and can sit on any vowel: â, ê, î, ô, û. On e it gives the open sound of è: fête (party), forêt (forest), tête (head). Very often it marks a letter that was once written and later dropped, usually an s. You can see the lost s in English words borrowed before it fell out: hôpital and hospital, forêt and forest, île and isle, fête and feast, château and castle. Spotting this link helps you guess the meaning of many French words.

Diaeresis and cedilla

The diaeresis (tréma) is two dots that tell you to say a vowel on its own instead of blending it with its neighbour. Mais (but) has the sound of è, while maïs (maize) is said ma-ees. Other examples are Noël (Christmas), naïf (naive) and Loïc, a first name. The cedilla (cédille) is the little hook under ç. It appears only on c, before a, o or u, and it makes the c sound like s: ça (that), garçon (boy), français (French), leçon (lesson), reçu (received). Without it, ca would be read ka.