What's the French alphabet like?

The French alphabet has 26 letters.
You may well have to spell out your name and perhaps your address in French. Here is the alphabet and how to pronounce it

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What's significant about the French alphabet?

• Vowels

  Interestingly, there are six vowels: a, e, i, o, u, y

  The most challenging vowel to pronounce is probably u as this sound doesn’t exist in English. Try saying menu, déjà vu, bus

  It’s also very common for French vowels to be combined to create specific sounds. Here are a few that are worth remembering:
  au, eau as in restaurant, gâteau
  ou as in rouge, red, beaucoup, a lot
  ai as in aimer, to like, français, French
  oi as in croissant, toilettes
  eu and œu as in bleu, blue, œufs, eggs

• Nasal sounds

  French is well-known for its nasal sounds and they don't have any equivalent in English.
  Want to give it a go? Try this sentence, which sums up all of the nasal sounds:
  un bon vin blanc - a nice white wine

• Consonants

  Unlike in English, h is generally silent, e.g
  hôtel, hôpital, habiter, to live

  You might be familiar with the r sound, which comes from the throat:
  adresse, dormir, to sleep

  You may have also come across ll in the unusual ouille sound, as in grenouille, frog and ratatouille

  And a typical aspect of the language is that not all letters are pronounced at the end of a word, e.g.
  restaurant, Paris, dessert, canard, duck

• Accents and cedilla

  What are they all about? There are four accents:
  acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (ê) and trema (ë)

  The accents on the vowel e indicate different sounds:
  é as in cinéma, été, summer
  è, ê, ë as in crème, fête, Noël, Christmas

  Accents are often used in writing to differentiate meaning, even when the pronunciation is the same:
  a / à - has / at
  ou / où - or / where
  la / là - the (fem. form)/ there
  sur / sûr - on / sure

  The cedilla, ç, is used before a, o, u and sounds the same as ‘s’, e.g. français, French, leçon, lesson, un reçu, a receipt

• Email and website conventions

  When giving an email or website address the conventions are:
  @arobase
  .point, dot
  /barre oblique, forward slash
  -tiret, hyphen