Introduction To French - Introduction Writing

Tutorial Transcript

hi welcome to introduction to French my name is Alicia and I'm joined by hi everyone I'm Candis in this lesson you'll learn the basics of French writing French uses the exact same alphabet as English the Latin alphabet which consists of 26 letters unlike English however French also uses a few accents that can be added to vowels and this other character known as the cedilla these characters aren't recognized as distinct letters in French though let's take a look at this accents in a bit more detail accents are simply markers that appear on top of letters to indicate some extra information what that information represents depends on the type of accent accents may look intimidating at first and their friction may seem complicated but in fact is quite simple once you understand them they actually help you rather than confuse you there are a total of five accents in French four of which appear over vowels and one for the letter C D acute accent the grave accent circumflex the D are Isis and the cedilha not all accents can be used with all vowels so only certain accents will appear over certain letters the acute accent for example can only appear over the letter e e it looks like a rising diagonal line going from left to right you'll never see this accent used with any other letter in French the acute accent indicates that you must pronounce the e as follows e a it sounds like the E in hey Apple Epperly Schultz Schulte so whenever you see this accent pronounce the e as follows e next is the grave accent it looks like a falling diagonal line going from left to right this accent can only appear over the letters a E u this accent helps distinguish between words that would otherwise be spelled the same for example ah and ah ooh and ooh when it appears over the letter E however it indicates that you must pronounce it as follows a a it sounds like the E in bet may flare next is the sir phlex accent it looks like a little rooftop it's used to indicate a change in pronunciation and to distinguish words that would otherwise be spelled the same the circumflex appears over all vowels and E with a circumflex accent on top is pronounced exactly the same way is the previous grave accented e a a like the e in bet fish fit and a with the circumflex accent on top is pronounced ah ah it sounds like the a in father but at Chateau and I with the circumflex accent on top does not affect the pronunciation of a word it exists merely due to historic purposes relating to a word knit Ed's in myths and like I I you with a circumflex accent does not influence the pronunciation of a word however it is sometimes used to distinguish words that would otherwise be identical sous-sous do do the next accent is the diaeresis it looks like two small dots and it can appear over the letters e I U and Y in French whenever this accent appears above a letter it indicates that you must pronounce this letter separately from the preceding syllable for example naive Newell nice the cedilha is a sea with a special hook underneath the function of this idealized simple it changes the pronunciation of the letter C from a to an S sound so ordinarily a French C would be pronounced Jessie but a cedilha would be pronounced so like an S sound like English French capitalizes the first letter at the beginning of a sentence journals dupa unlike English however there are a number of words which are not capitalized in French the personal pronoun for I is capitalized in English but not in French bon secours is cheb it for example days of the week are capitalized in English but not in French London mods mecodes months of the year aren't capitalized either Georgia favilla mass nor are languages lufthansa long lay low loose consider the following example Luka tolls are a Scylla fitness and Alphonsus notice how July and French are not capitalized japones Espanola I is capitalized here because it's the first letter at the beginning of a sentence but Spanish isn't there are some more capitalization rules but those are the most common ones you'll encounter well done let's wrap up this lesson by recapping what we've learned in this lesson you learned that French uses the same Latin alphabet is English consisting of 26 letters additionally there's also the acute accent grave accent circumflex diocese and cedilha which are used to accentuate certain letters you also learned that I days months and languages aren't capitalized in French in the next lesson you'll be entering French boot camp where you'll learn beginner phrases to get you speaking French right away see you in the next lesson bye bye