4 ms·

il aime vs. il a aimé la porte vs. il a porté etc. there are definitely words in French, where the accent makes a difference in pronunciation. there are also

il aime vs. il a aimé la porte vs. il a porté etc. there are definitely words in French, where the accent makes a difference in pronunciation. there are also some cases where there are meaning differences, even when the words are pronounced the same e.g. du vs. dû. Now it's usually not a problem, as ambiguity in general is rarely a problem in language due to context.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
"il a aimé" without accent is not "il aime" it's "il a aime", which people will understand is missing the accent. Likewise for your other example.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  It requires me a mental effort without the accent, though, and I will register it as a typo. You might as well write "il a aimer". The later sounds the same as with the accent, but it's obviously very wrong to put an infinitive there. I guess I proved your point to some extent: I care less about accent errors than other mistakes, and just consider it a typo. But reading a completely unaccented text is hard for me, and I text, e-mail, and communicate online a lot. In my experience, people are not foregoing them on purpose, except on capital letters, which is an heritage of AZERTY keyboards + windows (hopefully AFNOR keyboards catches on). Capital accented letters is the example to cite if you want an example of computer technology changing our habits: my friend Etienne (Étienne?) insists there is no accent on hist first name, but it makes no sense to me.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  But the point wasn't that you can't recover the meaning from context. Languages are full of homonyms and homographs, and even typos and outright errors usually don't hinder understanding. The point was simply that accents in French can change pronunciation, or at least change the meaning even if the pronunciation remains the same.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    I think the question was whether dropping the accents make reading a text difficult. Of course that may change words so requires a bit more effort but in general it's not that big a deal.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

"il a aimé" without accent is not "il aime" it's "il a aime", which people will understand is missing the accent. Likewise for your other example.

MayeulC 6y ago
It requires me a mental effort without the accent, though, and I will register it as a typo. You might as well write "il a aimer". The later sounds the same as with the accent, but it's obviously very wrong to put an infinitive there. I guess I proved your point to some extent: I care less about accent errors than other mistakes, and just consider it a typo. But reading a completely unaccented text is hard for me, and I text, e-mail, and communicate online a lot. In my experience, people are not foregoing them on purpose, except on capital letters, which is an heritage of AZERTY keyboards + windows (hopefully AFNOR keyboards catches on). Capital accented letters is the example to cite if you want an example of computer technology changing our habits: my friend Etienne (Étienne?) insists there is no accent on hist first name, but it makes no sense to me.
Tainnor 6y ago
But the point wasn't that you can't recover the meaning from context. Languages are full of homonyms and homographs, and even typos and outright errors usually don't hinder understanding. The point was simply that accents in French can change pronunciation, or at least change the meaning even if the pronunciation remains the same.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  I think the question was whether dropping the accents make reading a text difficult. Of course that may change words so requires a bit more effort but in general it's not that big a deal.