What's the French alphabet like? 4w564e

The French alphabet has 26 letters.
You may well have to spell out your name and perhaps your address in French. Here is the alphabet and how to pronounce it

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What's significant about the French alphabet? 1t6x3g

• Vowels 723lu

  Interestingly, there are six vowels:  a, e, i, o, u, y

  The most challenging vowel to pronounce is probably u as this sound doesn’t exist in English. Try saying  menu, déjà vu, bus

  It’s also very common for French vowels to be combined to create specific sounds. Here are a few that are worth ing:
   au, eau as in  restaurant, gâteau
   ou as in  rouge, red, beaucoup, a lot
   ai as in  aimer, to like, français, French
   oi as in  croissant, toilettes
   eu and œu as in  bleu, blue, œufs, eggs

   

• Nasal sounds 2l36c

  French is well-known for its nasal sounds and they don't have any equivalent in English.
  Want to give it a go? Try this sentence, which sums up all of the nasal sounds:
   un bon vin blanc - a nice white wine

   

• Consonants 1tgb

  Unlike in English, h is generally silent, e.g
   hôtel, hôpital, habiter, to live

  You might be familiar with the r sound, which comes from the throat:
   adresse, dormir, to sleep

  You may have also come across ll in the unusual  ouille sound, as in  grenouille, frog and  ratatouille

  And a typical aspect of the language is that not all letters are pronounced at the end of a word, e.g.
   restaurant, Paris, dessert, canard, duck

   

• Accents and cedilla 15306d

  What are they all about? There are four accents:
  acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (ê) and trema (ë)

  The accents on the vowel e indicate different sounds:
   é as in  cinéma, été, summer
   è, ê, ë as in  crème, fête, Noël, Christmas

  Accents are often used in writing to differentiate meaning, even when the pronunciation is the same:
   a / à - has / at
   ou / où - or / where
   la / là - the (fem. form)/ there
   sur / sûr - on / sure

  The cedilla, ç, is used before a, o, u and sounds the same as ‘s’, e.g.  français, French, leçon, lesson, un reçu, a receipt

   

• Email and website conventions 1r6w37

  When giving an email or website address the conventions are:
   @ arobase
   . point, dot
   / barre oblique, forward slash
   - tiret, hyphen