Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents French language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.
The following list is compiled from the Dictionnaire du Trésor de la langue française and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. It lacks many proper names and recent borrowings. In general, if a borrowed word is pronounced with an [h] in its language of origin, the h will be conserved in French orthography and be aspirated.
Dumas, Denis (1987), Nos Façons de Parler: les Prononciations en Français Québécois, Sillery, Quebec: Presses de l'Université du Québec, ISBN 2-7605-0445-X; Reinke, Kristin (2005), La langue à la télévision québécoise: aspects sociophonétiques (PDF), Gouvernement du Québec, ISBN 2-550-45542-8
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).
The French manual alphabet is an alphabet used for French Sign Language (LSF), both to distinguish LSF words and to sign French words in LSF.
Code braille français uniformisé pour la transcription des textes imprimés (CBFU) (PDF) (2nd ed.). 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-04. Commission Evolution du Braille Français (September 1999). Code de transcription en braille des textes imprimes (PDF) (2nd ed.). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-28.
In French, œ is called e dans l'o [ə dɑ̃ lo], which means e in the o (a mnemotechnic pun used first at school, sounding like (des) œufs dans l'eau, meaning eggs in water) or sometimes o et e collés, (literally o and e glued) and is a true linguistic ligature, not just a typographic one (like the fi or fl ligatures), reflecting etymology.