French

In French, the letter h can be aspirated (h aspiré), or not aspirated (h non aspiré), depending on which language the word was borrowed from. What do these terms mean?

Ex.: the word héros, (hero) has an aspirated h, because when the definite article le is placed before it, the result is le héros, and both words must be pronounced separately. However, the feminine form of héros, héroïne is a non-aspirated h. Therefore, when you put the definite article in front of it, it becomes l'héroïne, and is pronounced as one word.

Remember that in French, an h is NEVER pronounced, whether it is aspirated or not aspirated!

The only way to tell if the h at the beginning of a word is aspirated is to look it up in the dictionary. Some dictionaries will place an asterisk (*) in front of the entry word in the French-English H section if the h is aspirated. Other dictionaries will include it in the pronunciation guide after the key word by placing a (') before the pronunciation. In short, the words must be memorized.

Here is a table of some basic h words that are aspirated and not aspirated: aspirated

non-aspirated

héros, hero (le héros)

héroïne, heroine (l'héroïne)

haïr, to hate (je hais or j'haïs...) habiter, to live (j'habite...) huit, eight (le huit novembre)

harmonie, harmony (l'harmonie)

Exercise

1. Grab a French-English dictionary and find at least ten aspirated h words, and ten non-aspirated h words

2. On a piece of paper, write down the words you find in two columns

3. Look at it every day and memorize the columns

Punctuation

From Wiktionary:

French Vocabulary ? Print version ?

audio (info ?608 kb ? help)

Punctuation La ponctuation

&

esperluette, et

,

virgule

{ }

accolades

~

tilde

commercial

'

apostrophe

=

égal

%

pourcent

@

arobase, a

commercial, arobe

*

$

dollar

.

point

« »

guillemets

!

point

+

plus

d'exclamation

\

barre oblique

>

supérieur à

#

inverse

[ ]

crochets

<

inférieur à

?

point

d'interrogation

:

deux points

-

moins, tiret, trait

_

soulignement

d'union

;

point virgule

( )

parenthèses

/

barre oblique

The punctuation symbols in French operates very similarly to English with the same meaning. The only punctuation symbol not present in French would be the quotation marks; these are replaced by the guillemets shown in the table above.