Accents in French language are the marks placed over vowels in written french. These marks serve in general to distinguish not the stress but the particular sounds of the vowel.
There are three accents:
1) L'accent aigu(´) the acute accent which occurs only on e : été, année
2) L'accent grave(`) the grave accent which usually occurs on e: père, occurs on a or u to make a distinction between words: a - has; à - to, ou - or;
3)L'accent circonflexe (ˆ)can occur over any vowel (except y) this accent frequently indicates the omission of s from a word, ex: forest;fôret
Other orthographic signs:
1) la cédille: when placed under c, (before a,o,u) indicates that ç sounds like s instead of k. Ex:français
2) Le trema: the diæresis, shows that the vowel over which it is placed is pronounced separately from the one before it.
Ex: héroïque
3) L'apostrophe: indicates the omission of a vowel Ex: l'heure instead of la heure
4) Le trait d'union (-), the hyphen, is used to connect certain words.
Ex:avez-vous?a-t-il ?
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