French's alphabet (see French Alphabet) shares the same 26 Latin letters as English, but its accented vowels carry real pronunciation weight worth learning deliberately.
Rather than treating both as "e with a mark," practice them as distinct vowel sounds from the start — é and è represent different pronunciations, and the distinction can change a word's meaning.
The circumflex (^) often marks a letter — usually an "s" — that used to follow the vowel historically. Knowing this can help you recognize related words in other Romance languages or in English loanwords that kept the "s" (hôpital / hospital).
Treat œ (as in œuf) as one distinct letter representing one sound, not a stylistic combination of o and e — it appears in a specific, learnable set of words worth memorizing directly.
Omitting an accent isn't a minor shortcut — since accented vowels represent genuinely different sounds, dropping them can produce a misspelling or even change a word's meaning.
See also the reference page: French Alphabet.
No — they represent genuinely different vowel sounds, and the distinction can change a word's meaning, so they're worth learning as separate sounds from the start.
It frequently marks a letter — usually an "s" — that used to follow the vowel historically, which can help you recognize related words in English loanwords like hôpital/hospital.
No — it's technically a single letter representing one specific sound, appearing in a learnable, specific set of French words.
Not really — since accented vowels represent genuinely different sounds, omitting them can produce a misspelling or even change a word's meaning.