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French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

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Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#51

Post by huhtenberg »

If there's one thing I wish someone pointed out when I was just starting learning French is this:

  é - the accent is pointing up, so it's a higher-pitched e

  è - the accent is pointing down, so it's a lower-pitched e
That's it. That's how it should be explained.

* It's also in their names - aigu and grave, but this requires knowing what these words mean.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#52

Post by skydhash »

isolli wrote: post #40
skydhash wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one (un) is different from the others.

So I've been told... but I could never hear the difference myself!

The first one is pronounced with an O shape with the mouth (like you would do with the word oh), and the others with more of a smile shape (like with the word see). It’s impossible to pronounce one like the other.

I’m not a native English speaker and I gave up trying to pronounce th (father, through). Although I can hear the difference.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#53

Post by gitarre »

1-more wrote: post #28
khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

> one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles One friend of mine once had to translate English-to-English in France. A French policeman or taxi driver or something knew English as a second language. My friend is from New Jersey and sounds like what I might call CNN English (is there a name for roughly "unaccented" Northeast/West Coast/DC English?). The other person he was with had a t…

I think "General American English" is the term for that.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#54

Post by thiht »

khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

> French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care.

No we don’t, wtf

é and è (as well as e but it goes without saying) are very clearly distinct sounds.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#56

Post by embedding-shape »

ghewgill wrote: post #25
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #17

>Ê with the circumflex accent marks an “e” after which originally some other letter was written (usually an S), but this letter is no longer present in its modern spelling. [snip] >By imagining “es” instead of “ê”, we can often deduce the meaning of unknown words; for example, forêt = forest, fête = “feste” = fest(ival); intérêt = interest and many others. The circumflex accent is used in the very same sense also for…

I had that "a-ha" moment not at first by learning that "fenêtre" means "window", but later when I learned the German word is "Fenster".

> but later when I learned the German word is "Fenster".

Swedish word for it is strikingly similar, but with a hint of being more "hip and trendy restaurant in gentrified neighborhood": Fönster.

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#58

Post by z500 »

1-more wrote: post #28
khancyr wrote: post #9

French person here : no differences, we pronounce them all é and we don't care. For record, if ever you are ashamed to have some accent in french, one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles (about farmer looking for love)

> one current top show in France with French people on it got french subtitles One friend of mine once had to translate English-to-English in France. A French policeman or taxi driver or something knew English as a second language. My friend is from New Jersey and sounds like what I might call CNN English (is there a name for roughly "unaccented" Northeast/West Coast/DC English?). The other person he was with had a t…

Like that scene in Hot Fuzz where they go out to talk to the farmer about cutting his neighbor's hedge, and they need a translator for the translator

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#59

Post by wat10000 »

isolli wrote: post #27
abrowne wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other way – trying to spell a word you hear – is harder, since many sounds have multiple possible spellings. Hence la dictée .

While helping my children learn French spelling, I was horrified when I realized that there are 6 or 7 ways to write the sound [ɛ̃]: un in (im) [i]en ain aim ein

Gotta get it right or you'll order some wind instead of some wine. (Did that once, and that's how the difference finally stuck for me.)

Re: French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?

#60

Post by monsieurgaufre »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #48

As a native in English speaker, I refuse to switch to the French keyboard when writing in French I just don’t bother with accents. Why can’t French just be normal and know how to pronounce words without any hints like we do in English?

Une langue qui se simplifie sans arrêt n’est pas systématiquement meilleure.
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