Table of content

• e with acute accent – é
• e with grave accent – è
• e with circumflex – ê
• e with diaeresis – ë

e with acute accent – é

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L’accent aigu (acute accent) can only be added to the vowel e. It has an impact on the pronunciation.

é is pronounced as in the English word (may), but without pronouncing the second part of the vowel sound, associated to the letter y. Here is an example:

e with grave accent – è

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You may also find l’accent grave (grave accent) on the vowel e.

You should pronounce the letter è as in the English word (a bed):

e with circumflex – ê

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When added to the letter e, l’accent circonflexe (circumflex) also changes the pronunciation.

e with circumflex (ê) will be pronounced the same as è. It is the same sound as in the English word (a bed). For example:

The original purpose of the circumflex in French is to indicate that a letter has been dropped from the original spelling. For example, a long time ago, une forêt (a forest) used to be written like the English word: une forest.

e with diaeresis – ë

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The purpose of the tréma (diaeresis) is to show that two vowels must be pronounced separately.

In French, we use many combined letters. These are clusters of letters which form a unique sound.

However, when we want to pronounce each vowel separately, we add a diaeresis.

In other words, the diaresis is used to “break” the letter combinations.

Here is the example of two words (without and with diaeresis) for you to hear the (slight) difference:

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Work on your French pronunciation with a collection of posts with examples and audio recordings.