Different accents in French
Those little lines and squiggles that you see on top and underneath some letters in French are rather important
The little lines above and below some letters in French are called accents, although you might also hear their posher-sounding name: diacritics. They’re not found in English, so if you’re a native-English speaker learning French, you might have been a little confused by them.
Firstly, there are five different types of accents: acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (ê), trema (ë) and cedilla (ç).
We’ll start with the easiest one, which is the cedilla.
Cedilla
The cedilla is a little squiggle written underneath the letter c, making it ç. A cedilla simply changes the C from a K-sound to an S-sound. The letter c followed by an e and i is always pronounced like an s anyway, so you’ll only ever see a cedilla on a c in front of an a, o or u. Normally, the letter c in ca, co and cu is pronounced like a k, whereas the ç in ça, ço and çu is pronounced like an s.
Here are some words with a ç:
- français (French)
- ça (that)
- garçon (boy)
- façade (frontage)
- déçu (disappointed)
