Why do french people have those flick things?

Question

do you pronounce a word differently when there is a flick thing?
like how there is a flick on the "e" in repondre. do you say it differently?

tu parle le mets changed en ' en lettre?

did that line make sense because its ment to mean somethingn like when there is a word changed because of a flick on a letter...

did i say that right??

Answer 1

(Your sentence doesn't mean anything)

There are 4 accents in French. unfortunately, i can't show 2 of them to you without writing a letter!

Let's start with "^": It usually replaces a "s" which you didn't pronounce but showed that the vowel before was long. It could also have been another letter, but it was more unusual.
Ex: hôpital (hospital).
Nowadays, we don't really pronounce long vowels, so it's a bit useless.

"^" can also be used in conjugation. It follows strict rules (no need for you to know which ones, anyway).

To sum up: "^" doesn't change the prnunciation anymore.

"é", "è" and "ê" are pronounced differently.
Ex: the "è" in "mèle" is pronounced as "Michelle" (in English or French).
the "é" in "céder" is pronounced as ... I don't think you have an equivalent in English. Sorry.
the "ê" in "tête" is pronounced as in "set" (more or less)

(Sometimes, an "e" without an accent can be pronounced as an "é" or an "è". It depends on what follows it. A few rules but I'm not going to go into it)

We also have the "¨", but it would be a bit complicated to explain. It gives information on the pronunciation.
Ex: égoïsme. In French, "oi" is pronounced as ONE vowel. If you add a "¨", then you pronounce both "o" AND "i" (ex: é/go/ï/sm). Same thing for "Judaïsme". There are other rules depending on the letter, but you get the main idea)

As for "à", it doesn't change the pronunciation at all. With it you differentiate between "a" (from the verb "avoir") and à (the preposition). If French people can't make the difference, it means that they didn't understand the rule, which I think is quite easy, above all because there is a trick that's very easy to use (but I don't think it would make much sense to a non-native French speaker).

Ex: Il a mangé à la maison. The first "a" is the verb "avoir", which works as an auxilary here, and the second "à" is the preposition.

Answer 2

Whooops, your french sentence doesn't mean anything! But you're right, a flick change the prononciation, and there is several types of flicks, so several types of pronuncing the letter e for instance...
French is complex... but a nice language

Answer 3

The "flick thing" is called "accent" and of course it has a sense because otherwise it wouldn't exist.
This accent ´ means a "closed" pronounciation, these two ` ^ an "open" pronounciation.
And they are often necessary when the different pronounciation changes the meaning of the word.

Answer 4

à tes souhaits ma grande!!

Answer 5

é, è,ê pronouced something like "hey"

Answer 6

They're called accents.
I know that é is different (almost like ay) but I can never hear any other differences, and my husband, whose first language is French but he went to school in English can never keep track of a vs. à so I think that tells you they aren't different.

Oh but there's this woman (a fellow English-speaker in Switzerland) who I'm on a Yahoo group with who spells her daughter's name Aimèe instead of Aimée and I must say it looks so so SO wrong!


In some cases it's more so you can tell two words apart in writing. ^ indicates that an older version of the word had an s after the vowel. (Ex Château, castle)

Um, no, you didn't say that right, try:

Tu prononces le mot différément quand il y a ' sur la lettre.

Or closer to what you said, but still ok I think:

Tu parles avec le mot alteré au cas d'un ' sur la lettre.

Answer 7

That's a tricky one.
Because there is no rules really,
pronunciation varies a lot depending of what part of France the speaker is.
But to answer your question, yes an accent does alter the pronunciation of a vowel, that's its function.
And your sentence doesn't mean anything.

Thanks for taking interest in our language anyway.
Here's some links to help you:

http://french.about.com/library/pronunciation/bl-pronunciation.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/lj/pronunciation/
http://www.languageguide.org/francais/grammar/pronunciation/

Answer 8

'cause french is flicky!

Answer 9

I've been studying French for quite a while (living in France)... and frankly speaking, I have NEVER been capable of hearing the difference in pronunciation... to me, all accented "e"-s sound the same...

Answer 10

é
è
ê
e