Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CONTENTS
2 Vocabulary
2 Sample Sentences
3 Grammar
# 1
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VOCABULARY
un a article masculine
SAMPLE SENTENCES
L'agneau est le pet it du mout on. Il est huit heur es, c'est l'heur e de
par t ir au t r avail.
"A lamb is the baby sheep."
"It is eight o'clock; it is time to go
to work."
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Elle ador e le pain fr anais. La peur est un sent iment de
pr vent ion de danger .
She loves French bread.
"Fear is a feeling of prevention of
danger."
GRAMMAR
T he Fr ench Alphabet
The French writing system uses the Latin (or Roman) alphabet of the Roman Empire and
adds five accents: four on vowels and one on a consonant (the circumflex accent, acute
accent, grave accent, trema accent, and cedilla, respectively) in its writing system. These
marks mainly require us to use a specific pronunciation of letters that are accented in a
word.
The current French alphabet consists of five vowels and twenty-one consonants. Ideally,
each letter represents one speech sound, which, practically, is not always the case in French.
We form words by combining letters into syllables and syllables into words.
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff
Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll
Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr
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[em] [en] [o] [pe] [ku] [rgh]
Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx
Yy Zz
[ee-greyk] [z eyd]
Not e: We pronounce most consonants with a "hey" sound, as in the letters -d [dey] or -p
[pey].
To do so, tell the letter and add the word comme, meaning "as," followed by a word starting
with the provided letter. The words people use are often first names, domestic animals, fruits,
or vegetables.
For example, you can spell the alphabet using the words provided below. Of course, you can
modify this list with words you are familiar with.
French "English"
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j comme journe "j as in day"
Fr ench Accent s
The French language uses five accents. We use them mostly for phonetic reasons and also
to distinguish words, such as between the two words ou ("or") and o ("where").
Cdille accent (): We place this accent under the letter -c, appearing as the symbol . We
pronounce it as if an -s were in front of the vowels -a, -u, and -o; otherwise, we pronounce it
as a -k.
Aigu accent (): You will find this accent only over the letter -e to change its pronunciation to
[hey].
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Grave accent ('): We use this accent on the letters -a, -e, and -u. For the -a and -u, the
accent distinguishes between words that would otherwise have the same spelling, such as
("at") and a ("has").
Circonflexe accent (): We can use this accent on -a, -e, -i, -o, or -u. It is the consequence of
the language's evolution, as we place it where an -s used to precede a vowel, as in fort
("forest"). We also use it to distinguish words such as du (contraction of de + le) and d (past
participle of devoir).
Trma accent (): This accent appears on the letters -e, -i, and -u. We use it when two
vowels are next to each other and we must pronounce the letter -i separately from the
previous vowel. For example, we would pronounce the word nave without the trma accent
as [nay-v].
To spell accents in a word, the custom is just to say the letter followed by its accent, as they
are clearly understandable. For example, to spell the word a ("it") say, c cdille, a comme
Anne.
For Example:
French "English"
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