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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
Ï, lowercase ï, is a symbol used in various languages written with the Latin alphabet; it can be read as the letter I with diaeresis, I-umlaut or I-trema.. Initially in French and also in Afrikaans, Catalan, Dutch, Galician, Southern Sami, Welsh, and occasionally English, ï is used when i follows another vowel and indicates hiatus in the pronunciation of such a word.
Compound diacritics are possible, for example U+01DA ǚ LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND CARON, used as a tonal marks for Hanyu Pinyin, which uses both a two dots diacritic with a caron diacritic. Conversely, when the letter to be accented is an i , the diacritic replaces the tittle, thus: ï .
French aiguë or aigüe "acute (fem.)" Note that the e is silent in most modern accents; without the diacritic, both the e and the u would be silent, or pronounced as a schwa in accents that have conserved all post-consonantal schwas, including in poetry recitation, as in the proper name Aigues-Mortes [ɛɡ(ə)mɔʁt(ə)].
Wherever accents are missing or wrong because of past errors or omissions or a change of pronunciation, they are added or changed: receler → recéler (to receive – stolen goods) événement → évènement [evɛn(ə)mɑ̃] (event) Accents are also added to loanwords where dictated by French pronunciation: diesel → diésel (diesel)
Ö, or ö, is a character that represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter "o" modified with an umlaut or diaeresis. Ö, or ö, is a variant of the letter O. In many languages, the letter "ö", or the "o" modified with an umlaut, is used to denote the close-or open-mid front rounded vowels ⓘ or ⓘ.
The circumflex first appeared in written French in the 16th century. It was borrowed from Ancient Greek, and combines the acute accent and the grave accent.Grammarian Jacques Dubois (known as Sylvius) is the first writer known to have used the Greek symbol in his writing (although he wrote in Latin).
In Dutch and French, the second of two vowels in hiatus is marked with a diacritic (or tréma) if otherwise that combination could be interpreted as a single vowel (namely either a diphthong, a long vowel, or as having one of the vowels silent, etc.).