Acute Accent: é

Accent aigu

In French, E is the only letter that can be modified with l’accent aigu, the acute accent. With the accent, it may be called either e accent aigu or simply é, pronounced [e] (more or less like "ay"). As indicated by the latter, the acute accent changes the vowel’s pronunciation to [e].

Par exemple…

é sound
un été		summer
une école		school
un défi		challenge
raffiné		refined

 Note that there are several other spellings which create the same pronunciation – see lesson on E.

Spelling notes

At the beginning of a word, é is usually a sort of linguistic marker, indicating that the Old French or Latin word started with es or s. (Incidentally, the English equivalent often starts with s or es as well.)

Par exemple…

été		originally spelled esté		summer
établir		from Latin stabilire		establish

 É is an open vowel, which means it can only be found in open syllables. It never precedes the letter x or any doubled consonant, and it’s never found in the final syllable of a word followed by any consonant other than s. (With the exception of apocopes like dém, short for démission.)

Accent on grammar

1) The past participle of all –er verbs ends in é.

Par exemple…

manger		j’ai mangé
aller		je suis allé

2) É features in the é_er to è_er type of stem-changing verb: it changes to è (e accent grave) in the affected conjugations.

Par exemple…

gérer		je gère
répéter		je répète

3) Traditionally, é was added to the end of regular –er verbs in inversion with je:

parler		parlé-je
marcher		marché-je

 Related lessons

• Letter: E
• Vowels
• Consonants
• Open vs closed vowels and syllables
• Past participles
• Stem-changing verbs
• Introduction to accents
• How to type French accents

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