French accent marks are stylish and distinctive pieces of punctuation, and they serve a functional purpose. For example, the accent aigu tells you to pronounce the last letter of the word, while the accent grave signals that you shouldn’t.

In French, we have five diacritics that can be added to certain letters. Let's take a look at all the French accent marks, from à to é to ç!

Learn all five French accents: la cédille, l’accent aigu, l’accent grave, l’accent circonflexe, and l’accent tréma. See pronunciations and examples.

Unlock the mystery of French accents & diacritics, those mysterious squiggly characters and marks above and below certain letters in French words such as garçon or Nöel.

At the beginning of a word, it often indicates that an S used to follow that vowel, e.g., étudiant. The grave accent can be found on an A, E, or U. On the A and U, it usually serves to distinguish between homonyms; e.g., ou (or) v où (where) Circumflex. This can be on an A, E, I, O, or U.