9 ms·
French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?
- sylware 7mo ago[dead]
- tsss 7mo agoFrench is such a shitty language. I've been learning Polish lately and every word is spoken exactly as you write it. A real breath of fresh air.
- IncreasePosts 7mo agoThat's more of an orthographic problem than a language problem.
- tempaccountabcd 7mo ago[dead]
- artwr 7mo agoThem be fighting words! But as a native French speaker, I wholeheartedly agree that it is a tricky language. But there is so much pleasure in speaking it that I miss in English sometimes. Fabrice Lucchini (an actor) is speaking about the language of Louis-Ferdinand Céline (an author from last century): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHrkC3vaqB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHrkC3vaqB8 Even if you do not speak French, I hope the passion comes through.
- werdnapk 7mo agoI'm a native English speaker who's very exposed to French, but doesn't speak it, I find the use of accents in French very welcome to getting the pronunciation right when exposed to a new word. English is just a mess in comparison and I wish it had made use of accents as well to avoid a lot of the ambiguities in pronunciation. Perhaps some of the old English letters that are no longer in use helped a bit, but I'm not familiar enough with those to know if it used to be better.
- rkomorn 7mo agoYou mean kinda like how (as I recently was informed) "ye olde" is actually pronounced "the old" but written "ye" because of printing issues, and consequently mispronounced by almost everyone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde
- kreyenborgi 7mo agoCześć!
- tombh 7mo ago"Hey", /ˈheɪ/, has a dipthong /eɪ/, so é is precisely the first half of that dipthong. It may feel like it's between the “e” in “bet” and “ee” in “see”, but using the dipthong you don't have to guess it.
- jinushaun 7mo agoTechnically true, but this concept is foreign to English speakers. English relies heavily on diphthongs and can’t separate the sounds in their head. Simplest example is probably the word “no” which is very much a diphthong. That’s why they always have such predictable accents in another language.
- bloppe 7mo agoI've been speaking French since pre-school (albeit in North America mostly) and to me é always sounds more like the English short i (as in "tip"). I'm becoming increasingly convinced that everybody on Earth but me is wrong about it.
- tombh 7mo agoThey're extremely close! /ɪ/ literally sits next to /e/ on the vowel chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_diagram#/media/File%3AIPA_vowel_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_diagram#/media/File%3AIP...
- m132 7mo agoDo you happen to be from the western US or Canada? They tend to lower the /ɪ/ monophthong (i of tip, pit, sit, etc.) there, making it sound pretty close to /e/ (French é, German eh). It's one of those things that, combined with regionalisms and other accent features, give away where you grew up :) I noticed a lot of Londoners do this too, though this is just my experience.
- bloppe 7mo agoNope, Northeast. And my French teachers spoke with a Parisian accent.
- strongpigeon 7mo agoAs a native (Québécois) French speaker who's been living in the US for most of my adult life, something I miss from French is that once you've learned the (many) rules, you can be pretty confident about how to pronounce a given word. English on the other hand has so many exceptions (usually based on the origin of the word), that I still encounter words that I'll mispronounce at first. I can typically pass as a native speaker, until I "leak" by tripping on one of those.
- freedomben 7mo agoNative English speaker, but yes this is something I love about Spanish. There are rules to learn (sometimes quite variable depending on Mexico vs. Spain, etc) but once you learn them, pronunciation is usually pretty confident. Though one downside which I've gleaned from friends who are non-native English speakers, is that the variance in pronunciation in English does sometimes lead to native English understanding what you meant, whereas in Spanish if you're pronouncing it wrong the listener often has no idea what you're trying to say. That's heavy anecdata though. I'd be super interested to hear from others if that's been their experience or not.
- strongpigeon 7mo agoI would say I agree. That being said, my experience is biased from working in Big Tech where the accents are on such a wide spectrum that people have no choice but to develop a "flexible" ear.
- rkomorn 7mo agoI think you're right that working in certain areas (geographical or professional) gives you an ability to grasp all kinds of English. I've worked in universities and in tech, in New Jersey, LA, and Silicon Valley, and I feel like I can understand just about anyone's English. Ironically, the ones I have the hardest time understanding are almost always Brits.
- Joker_vD 7mo ago
- khancyr 7mo agoFrench 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)
- freedomben 7mo agoNice, thanks for sharing. Having been "accent shamed" in the past with Spanish*, I am a little terrified to try speaking foreign language in front of others. Hearing this makes me want to learn French (on top of plenty of other great reasons to learn it). * In fairness, most (but not all) of it was probably light-hearted laughter, but I didn't understand that at the time so it left an unfortunate psychological imprint on me that is hard to shake and gives me anxiety even thinking about it
- 1-more 7mo ago> 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 thick Alabama accent. The Frenchman could not understand what he said directly, but could understand it when repeated by the New Jerseyan.
- gitarre 7mo agoI think "General American English" is the term for that.
- z500 7mo agoLike 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
- School-Cotton 7mo ago> (is there a name for roughly "unaccented" Northeast/West Coast/DC English?) General American English. Although it's traditionally much more common among white people in the western half of the country. People on the east coast, as well as black people everywhere, traditionally have distinctive accents (though these are fading over time, and many people from either group now speak pure General American).
- nathan_douglas 7mo agoI'm trying to get to B2/C1 in French and intend to move to France in 2028. Over the years I've picked up a little Spanish here, took a few years of German there, etc. Recently I read _Erec and Enide_ [1] and it was really cool to be able to find the original Old French version of it and read large parts of it (not the whole thing) and find it so much easier to read than Early Middle English like the _Ancrene Wisse_ [2], etc. One of the things I've really appreciated about LLMs is to be able to ask about the divergence of the Romance languages, e.g. "why does 'y' mean 'there' in French and 'and' in Spanish?" and get a legible response. It's really enhanced the learning experience by taking seemingly arbitrary differences and situating them in historical contexts, etc. I think it makes more connections somehow and helps me build fluency faster. IDK what my point is, I just find this stuff fun to think about, even if you're not a French language learner. I'm gonna have to dig deeper into this site, thanks for sharing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erec_and_Enide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erec_and_Enide [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancrene_Wisse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancrene_Wisse
- windowshopping 7mo agoYou may enjoy the book Latin alive, for me it was a revelation on how the romance languages diverged and took their present forms.
- nathan_douglas 7mo agoThank you so much for the recommendation! I think that's right up my alley and I'm gonna grab it right now.
- Muromec 7mo agoIs it even possible to actually learn the language without living in the environment, where it gets in your face all the time?
- Koshkin 7mo agoYes. Linguists do that all the time. People do learn Latin, etc.
- Amorymeltzer 7mo ago>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 other vowels, for example île = isle, hôte = “hoste” = host, hâte = haste. I will always remember this, thanks to my high school French teacher who, knowing her audience, gave us a few examples like "hôpital," and then said "So you can probably guess was 'bâtard' means..."
- ghewgill 7mo agoI had that "a-ha" moment not at first by learning that "fenêtre" means "window", but later when I learned the German word is "Fenster".
- dismalaf 7mo agoOr defenestrate...
- cryptonector 7mo agoA uniquely... English word, that.
- throw0101a 7mo agoIt originated in Prague due to two incidents: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration#Origin * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague
- ithkuil 7mo agoAlso used in Italian and presumably in many other languages. Like with any word, it's use in colloquial form may vary from generation to generation, from subculture to subculture etc
- chinadata 7mo ago[dead]
- while_true_ 7mo agoAs one dabbling in Mandarin, this french e, è, é, ê, ë thing makes me chuckle. Mā mà mǎ ma? (Is Mom scolding the horse?)
- trvz 7mo agoLearning about any other language just shows the supremacy of the Hungarian alphabet.
- brainwad 7mo agoMultiple digraphs, a _trigraph_ and then accents too? Ugh. The real best alphabet is something like Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, IMO.
- bethekidyouwant 7mo agoAs 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?
- monsieurgaufre 7mo agoUne langue qui se simplifie sans arrêt n’est pas systématiquement meilleure.
- Muromec 7mo agoIt's actually the French who are being normal. And the rest of European part of Indo-European language speakers.
- dadoum 7mo ago100% agree with you on that one. And while we are it, now that we live in the computer age, why aren't we huffman-coding the whole language? that would be heck of a lot quicker instead of all slowing down to help the bunch of illiterates who can't remember the pronunciations.
- ahtihn 7mo agoCough, though, tough, ... Good luck guessing the pronounciation just gotta learn it. Clearly the superior system.
- bethekidyouwant 7mo agocough: la tout (f.) Or un toussement (m.) Actually, if they used accents to denote, whether a word was male or female, I would be totally down.
- sph 7mo ago> know how to pronounce words without any hints like we do in English Ha ha. Thanks for making me laugh. Of course it's the native English speaker utterly blind to the barbaric rules of his language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos
- huhtenberg 7mo agoIf 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.
- Muromec 7mo ago> That's it. That's how it should be explained. That's contingent on your ability to imagine sounds doing ups and downs.
- huhtenberg 7mo agoProbably more on imaging / as going up and \ as going down. I'd think that associating pitch increase/decrease with up/down works for the vast majority of people without any second thought.
- scrumper 7mo agoMy first French teacher drew a picture of a smiling triangular-topped tombstone with long eyelashes on the blackboard, the word "acute" written up the left (ascending) side of the top and "grave" down the right hand side. A cute grave. Easy to remember. And fairly useless, since it doesn't help a whit with how to pronounce those accents.
- _ache_ 7mo agoAnd ê, when pronounced (most of the cases) it's just a è. ë, contrary as said in the article (full slop?) is the most complicated and with some exceptions. But there is so few words that use that letter that you just don't have to care. Just pronounce ë as è when its in (inside) a word and not pronounced at all when it's at the end. The only exception I can think of is canoë (pronounced conoé), but everybody will understand if you say cano.
- 7mo ago
- xvxvx 7mo agoIf the ‘e’ is pronounced ‘ah’ then just change the damn spelling of the word to reflect it then.
- gottheUIblues 7mo agoShouldn't that be the "dam spelling" then?
- kulesh 7mo agoPolish s, ś, sz, z, ź, ż, rz, c, ć, cz, si, zi, ci – what's the difference? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533035 :)
- Muromec 7mo agoWesternmost Eastern Europeans would do anything but use the actual script that makes sense for their language. How hard is it to just use с, ш, щ, ч and ц like civilized peoples.
- yhavr 7mo agoMuch simpler, IMHO single letter = sound letter + z = "hissing" version of the sound letter + accent = soft version of the hissing sound letter + i = same previous item, but caused by "i" rz = legacy, czechs still pronounce it as a different letter This is how I understand it as Ukrainian
- blueaquilae 7mo agoCela fait il encore sens?
- nbernard 7mo ago> Ë with diaeresis is the easiest case to deal with. The diaeresis (the two dots) signifies that the underlying “e” is pronounced as /ɛ/ (as “e” in “bet”, i.e. the open e), no matter what comes around it, and is used in groups of vowels that would otherwise be pronounced differently. Yes, but there are other uses. For instance, in "ambiguë", the ë itself is silent but signals that the u before it is pronounced as a standard u. Without the diaeresis, the u itself would be silent but would make the g hard (in French, g before e is soft).
- mytailorisrich 7mo agoYes "ambiguë" is pronounced exactly as if it was written "ambigu". The thing here for those wondering is the masculine and feminine in French, with the feminine created by adding an 'e' (often silent!). "Ambigu" is masculine and "ambiguë" is feminine but as you said without the diaeresis that final 'e' would completely change the pronounciation of the word.
- ernesth 7mo ago> Ë with diaeresis is the easiest case to deal with Wait, no! This is the most complicated one, fortunately it's scarcely appears. In canoë, the ë is pronounced as an é. In Noël, it's pronounced as an è. In ambiguë, it's not pronounced at all!
- keeda 7mo agoUgh, I'm triggered. The hardest part about learning French in school was these damn accents. I never quite got the rules and could not memorize the spellings, and so in my written tests I'd just randomly throw in some accent on some letter if I kinda remembered or, more often, guessed that one belonged in there somewhere. This annoyed my French teacher, a native Parisian, no end. She'd get extremely frustrated and say something like "Can't you hear what you wrote?! You don't pronounce 'Noël' as 'Noél', that sounds ridiculous!" and for the life of me I could not hear the difference. Yeah, my French grades weren't great. But I redeemed myself much later in life by having an extended spoken conversation, where misspellings matter much less, in French with a very patient Canadian listener. Also I felt better to find out a lot of the differences in various French accents relate to how these vowels are pronounced. A funny anecdote I heard was from a Qubecios person who visited Paris and placed an order at a restaurant in French. The two waitresses stared at him for a couple of seconds, and then one of them leaned to the other and whispered, in French, "I think he's trying to speak French."
- stronglikedan 7mo agoall the same after a little transliteration
- aaroninsf 7mo agoThe disagreements ITT at least answer the question I came away with after scanning this post—"if these are almost all pronounced the same, why the different diacriticals?" The partial answer being, some dialects retain differences and they are significant. My own accent is not terrible especially for an American raised when and where I was, but I internalized it early enough (just through middle school instruction, sadly) that I don't even know if I pronounce them all the same... I'd have to read some passages and inspect. But I was hoping for a little more by way of explicit discussion of the why, which I infer is largely: diacriticals are mostly artifacts of etymology which at some point became ossified and absent a Dudens-like change in prescriptive heart, are here to stay, mostly unvoiced indicators of language evolution (like the silent k and gh in English knight).
- tsoukase 7mo agoFor me the greatest boost to advance European foreign language fluency was to learn for one year the Japanese. Because it dwarfs in complexity any Latin language, I was able to: 1) locate and focus at the difficult parts of each (eg English phrasal verbs, French accent, German grammar) 2) realise the huge similarity between euro languages and leverage it 3) increase my confidence in deeper learning
- iqandjoke 7mo agoPokeèéêëmon
- pjmlp 7mo agoGiven its origins, Portuguese also inherits all the è, é, ê, ë from French, across the various vowels. Thanks to the various language revisions it is a mess for foreigners to learn, because, some words have lost their diacritics, however when speaking them depending on the situation, you still have to pronounce them as if they were there. Examples, for her (para ela), stop the car (para o carro), however the second "para", would have been written "pára" until 2009, and still retains the same sound when spoken. Then you have ridiculous sentences like "Ela nunca para para pensar nas consequências de seus atos.", (she never stops to think on the outcome of her actions).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- gkoenig 7mo agoHey, just a little thing: I am pretty sure that "Noel" would be pronounced exactly the same way as "Noël". Also for the é,è,ê, prononciations vary wildly by regions (in Belgium they are different, "ê" is like "è" but longer) but in the South of France, most people I have met do not hear the difference (but sometimes pronounce it, which always surprise me).
- jackhalford 7mo agoFluent french speaker and currently learning spanish, I feel so lucky it’s not the other way around…