French uses the same 26 letters as English plus five accent marks: é, è, ê, à and ç, with friends like î, ô, û and the joined œ. Accents are part of the spelling, never a decoration — this lesson names each one and shows what it does to the sound.
| French | English | Say it |
|---|---|---|
| él’été (lay-TAY), summer | accent aigu — "ay" | ay |
| èla mère (lah MEHR), mother | accent grave — "eh" | eh |
| êla tête (lah TEHT), head | the "hat" (circumflex) — "eh" | eh |
| çça va (sah VAH) | the "tail" (cedilla) — soft s | s |
| àtells words like a/à apart on paper | grave on a — same "ah" sound | ah |
| œla sœur (lah SUHR), sister | o and e joined | uh |
Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.
Each word is read twice — say it back in the gap. Computer-generated voice; credits on the course page.
Writing "ecole" for école is a spelling mistake, the way "scool" is in English. When you copy a French word, the accent gets copied with it — the workbook drills this with tracing rows, and you can do the same on any sheet of paper.
You will meet the French names of the letters (ah, bay, say…) when you need to spell aloud. For now the accents matter more, because they change how words sound and what they mean.
This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The French Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.
Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.
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