French diacritical "acute" question?

May 2021 5 95 Report

French diacritical "acute" question?

I've been taught that the 'up to the right' diacritical over the 'e' in French is called "acute." My son has recently been taking French and calls it "agoo." (I know the spelling is probably incorrect.) Is this the French word for "acute?" If so, do you know the correct spelling? (apparently son was not paying attention in class and can't help : )

Also, anyone know of a good online chart/reference that gives you pronunciation of the diacriticals and also key combinations on the computer that types out the marks?

merci!

Society & Culture / Languages

Verified answer

Your son is correct. The "acute accent" is known in French as the "accent aigu" (pronounced "ay-goo"). It generally alerts us of the pronunciation of an "e" in a word. If the accent aigu is present, we pronounce the "e" like "ay".

Example-

without accent aigu: parle - pronounced "par-luh"

with accent aigu: parlé - pronounced "par-lay"

These websites provide more information on all of the French diacriticals :

http://french.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/accents...

http://www.languedoc-france.info/060103_accent.htm

This website will give you the keystrokes :

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/b...

Hope that helps! :)

GrahamH

It's spelt "aigu" - which is French for "acute".

If you are have Windows: there are a numbr of ways to write the accents:

the easiest way to write é is to hold down ctrl+delete and type e. Capital É can be written by holding down ctrl+al+shift. I have to say that this method does not work on all computers.

Again, if you have windows, you will find a tool in "System tools" called Character Map; this contains every foreign symbol you could ever have to make; you select the letter you want then simply copy and paste.

There is a quicker - but rather more more complex - way of writing letters with accents:-

é - hold down the alt key and type 0233: NOTE this HAS to be on the keypad to the right of the keyboard; it won't work if you use the row of numbers at the top of the keyboard

à - alt+0224

â - alt + 0226

ê - alt+0234

è - alt+0232

î - alt + 0238

ò - alt+0242

ô - alt + 0244

ù - alt + 0249

ü - alt + 0252 (called diaresis, which occurs occasionally in French, mostly Bibilical names, to show that the u is pronounced separately and not as part of a diphthong: Saül, Emmaüs, Capharnaüm)

ç - alt+0231

srinivasan

We had an orthopaedic doctor our health facility referred to as Kneiffe much more bizarre however real he was once French!! True tale. We actually have a traveling advisor vascular doctor referred to as Mr Butcher :))