27
votes
Accepted
Ça vs. ca in French
ca is not a word in French. It can only be used as an abbreviation:
- of centiare
- of circa
and these two abbreviations are rarely used.
Only ça exists as a word in French. What you might have ...
- 60.3k
23
votes
Can I drop French accents when writing computer text in French?
With a QWERTY keyboard I would suggest the International Keyboard.
You can type very efficiently all the accents (not only for the French language; I use it, for instance, to type German diacritics as ...
- 27.6k
21
votes
Accepted
Why does French have letter é and e?
There are many accents in French, you can't decide to use them or not as it pleases you.
It's always here for a reason, and if you don't use it when needed, either the word doesn't mean anything, or ...
- 3,745
20
votes
Accepted
What exactly do the French diacritics denote? And can they be implied/expelled?
Diacritics are part of French orthography. To take one example, "dû" is the past participle of "devoir". If you remove the circumflex, it becomes "du", the contraction of "de" + "le".
Different ...
- 316
16
votes
What exactly do the French diacritics denote? And can they be implied/expelled?
For reference, the usual diacritics are as follows.
Accent aigu: é
Pronunciation: Uniformly causes the vowel to be pronounced [e] (as in English "may").
There are some rare exceptions where it's ...
- 19.2k
14
votes
Accepted
Regarding usage and history of special character/symbols/diacritics in French?
Your question is very interesting, but quite complex too. First, it is interesting to notice that accents, in French, didn't exist until the end of the 16th century. The reason why they have been ...
- 2,288
13
votes
Accepted
Raison pour laquelle « é » s'appelle « e accent aigu » et pas « e accent grave »
Les langues évoluent et les intonations changent, mais l'origine des accents aigu et grave remonte pratiquement à l'Antiquité. Les accents français ont été hérités principalement du grec ancien, mais ...
- 12.2k
13
votes
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Does savoir use a circumflex on the past participle su?
It is not a typo. Before being written su, this past participle was written as sû or sü to remind the older spelling seu (along with sçu, sceu and other).
Jean Le Jeune, Le missionnaire de l'oratoire,...
- 146k
12
votes
Why does French have letter é and e?
This is an accent called acute. é is therefore called "e acute". The prononciation is different from e and cannot be dropped in any case unless an alternative spelling exists (like clef and clé).
The ...
- 1,362
12
votes
Accepted
Why is there no cedilla on the c in porcelaine ?
C can be pronounced [k] or [s].
C is pronounced [k] before a, o, u, or any consonant (except h). Call this the "hard" C.
calembour cour cul croquer
C is pronounced [s] before e, i, y. Call this ...
- 19.2k
11
votes
Accepted
Can I drop French accents when writing computer text in French?
It won't be correct French, but it is of course accepted in informal emails since the writer has a foreign keyboard. You are not expected to copy and paste letters. Some people add a P.S. explaining ...
- 433
10
votes
Accepted
« un seul accent, horizontal, qu’on appelle couramment l’accent plat » ?
Les accents de guingois en travers des titres sont, je crois, simplement les accents habituels, qui sont obliques pour la plupart des gens, et de guingois pour ceux qui ne les aiment pas, le ...
- 11.3k
10
votes
Are there any rules about circumflex accents?
There is no straightforward rule for this so you'll have to learn to some extent. However, you can definitely get some hints in many cases provided you speak English (which has many common roots with ...
- 433
10
votes
Can I drop French accents when writing computer text in French?
I recommend using a Compose key. It's built-in in Mac OS and Linux(usually activated somewhere in Settings→Keyboard) and there's a very good open-source Compose key for Windows called WinCompose.
How ...
- 109
8
votes
Hôpital / hospitalier : why the s in the latter?
As you can see from the "disappearance of s" section in Circumflex in French, the ^ indicates (in this case) that the word hôpital used to have a "silent" S. It indeed comes from ...
- 5,575
8
votes
Accepted
L'origine du c cédille
Je suis loin d'être spécialiste, mais je pense que les liens ci-dessous (questions sur FSE) peuvent donner des indications et constituent un bon point de départ (voir aussi les références mentionnées ...
- 27.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Circumflex and deletion of letters
The circumflex of "Saône" seems to have been intended to reflect the pronunciation (like that of Rhône) and isn't etymological. In Middle French, the spelling was in concurrence with Sonne and Saulne, ...
- 9,709
7
votes
Why is there no cedilla on the c in porcelaine ?
I am guessing it is not needed because the following e induces a [se] pronunciation naturally. Same for i: ci-devant is fine without cédille. This is not the case with a, o, u, which result in a [ka, ...
- 8,684
7
votes
Accepted
D'où vient le féminin d'aigu, exigu, ambigu… ?
Le tréma sur le E assure que le groupe UE n’est pas un digramme, c’est-à-dire que les deux voyelles sont à considérer comme deux entités non-liées. On doit donc prononcer le U, qui est suivi d’un E ...
- 11.3k
7
votes
Why is "dessin" pronounced like "déssin"?
Yes silph, there is a rule: when the "e" is followed by a pair of consonants, you say "é" like in "dessin, pression" or "è" like in "belle, bretelle, parisienne, guerre"...
Well, because it's french :...
- 174
7
votes
Accepted
Accent aigu sur le « e » de « demain »
Les règles a, b, c citées représentent des contraintes sur l'accent aigu.
Cela ne veut pas dire qu'il faut mettre un accent aigu sur tout autre « e », mais sur tout autre « e » qui se prononce [e] (...
- 19.2k
7
votes
Why does bêta have an accent?
The ê letter has been chosen to represent the ancient Greek ῆ (êta) of βῆτα (modern Greek ή). It corresponds to an open long vowel [ɛː] while AmE uses [eɪ] and BrE uses [i] instead 1.
The French ...
- 146k
6
votes
Ça vs. ca in French
When people do not have French keyboards available, they sometimes write ça as ca. This is becoming much less common as more and more systems are adapted to work with the French alphabet.
The ...
- 181
6
votes
Accepted
The French accents (marks above vowels)
You can't ignore them since they change the pronunciation (most of the time) and the meaning. They are like real letters.
Some words just have letters with an accent so you have to learn and write ...
- 3,745
6
votes
Accepted
Quand met-on un accent aigu sur le « e » dans le préfixe « re » ?
On écrit ré- si le verbe commence par une voyelle (parfois en alternance avec r- seul): réinitialiser, réanalyser, réécrire, réouverture etc. C'est ce qui se passe avec réitérer.
Dans le cas des ...
- 17.3k
6
votes
Accepted
Amer, amère, d'où vient la différence ?
La règle d'écriture est simple:
On ne met jamais d'accent sur le e de la terminaison -er, que le r final se prononce ou pas car dans ce dernier cas, l'accent ferait double emploi avec le r qui ...
- 146k
6
votes
Accepted
La fréquence d'emploi de « véto » est-elle comparable à celle des autres mots d'origine étrangère dont la graphie a été rectifiée par accentuation ?
J’ai choisi quelques termes parmi ceux proposés par l’Office Québécois de la langue française et ai décidé de comparer non les fréquences absolues d’emploi, mais plutôt les fréquences relatives de la ...
- 11.3k
6
votes
Accepted
Omitting diacritics on a display with limited character set
Diacritics are typographically mandatory on capital letters but you are in an obvious case where you have no other choice than missing them and use the unaccented letters. Dynamic traffic signals have ...
- 146k
5
votes
Why "déjà" with grave accent on "à", not just "déja"?
Le CNRTL commente ainsi :
Étymol. et Hist. Ca 1275 des ja « dès à présent » (J. de Meun, Rose, éd. F. Lecoy, 19189); 1465 desja « dès ce moment là (du passé) »
Composé de dès* et de l'a. fr. ja ...
- 7,490
5
votes
Why does French have letter é and e?
This character is a "e accent aigu", you pronounce it like the "e" in "heya". Writing the words with a simple "e" instead is a mistake. You can do that only when:
The "é" is a capital letter (though ...
- 6,062
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