Say Cafebruary (café + February, removing the “fé”part) a few times, then say it again but stop at ( é ), don’t pronounce “bruary”. Pronounced the English way, these words fail to sound French the microsecond the ( i ) sound leaves our oral cavity. Nor is it, like some suggest, pronounced AY as in Tray or Parlay. Warning: don’t let acutely accentuated French loanwords fool you – (é) is NOT pronounced like in Café and Résumé in English. “é” is pronounced like the “e” in “ elementary” (not “ee” as in “ ebook” or “e” as in “hot el”). Changing the meaning and grammatical function of a word.Changing the pronunciation of the letter “e”.The ( é ) serves 2 unfortunately-not-so-distinct purposes: Where you’ll find it: that one’s fussy it only hovers over the letter “E”.ĭid someone say rules? French acute accent ( é ) essential rules

How the French call it: L’accent aigu (“AXAN TÉGU”) Oh, but before anything, some de rigueur facts. That having been said, let’s jump into it. Tout ça pour dire que (all this to say that), one: taming ( é ) isn’t a walk in the park, but the day you’ll have done so, you’ll earn my people’s eternal respect and two : when it comes to spelling, trust books and some of the rules you’re about to learn, but not your French pen pal’s 3 a.m. I’m a post-grad native French speaker, and yet I need to triple-check anything I write in French for these huge tiny little ( é ) oversights.Ĭonfusions between ( é ) and other spellings keeping in their wallet the same phonetic ID ( ai, ait, aie, est, et, er) are probably the most common species of spelling mistakes you’ll see on any average French person’s Facebook or Instagram timeline, let alone comment section. Its pronunciation isn’t that hard, but gosh do we hate that one, we the raconteurs, the expressive, when comes the time to stop the chatters and open the chatrooms.

Words with accent grave in french