Learning French in Paris, Leçon 0 – 2

Crépieux, G. Massé, O. Rousse, J. (2013) Interactions 1: Méthode De Français (Course material for Français langue étrangère at Lycée d’Adultes, Paris)

The Alphabet

The French alphabet is basically the same as the English alphabet but some of the letters have different sounds. To make matters worse some of them have sounds similar to other letters in the English language. For instance I sounds like E to me, J sounds like G, E sounds like A and A sounds like R.

It is, however, important to get them right. Not only for correct pronunciation but in case someone asks you to spell your name or you wish to give them your email address.

A phone conversation might go like this;

In the above conversation Jane would probably have spelt Doe as D O I, not D O E. Play the recording below and scroll down the alphabet.

Another important part of French is the use of accents, grave accent, circumflex, trema and other language constructs. Some of these are listed in the table below.

These notes are from Interactions 1 Méthode de Française A1.1 and where copyrighted work is used it is done so under the New Zealand Copyright Act 1994.