Many students who learn French guess their way through the accents and never really take them seriously. In today’s lesson I’ll answer a very specific question: “How do you pronounce the è with the downward slanting grave accent?”. We have great audio and by the end of the lesson you’ll never have to guess again!
è accent grave
è (sounds like eh as in bet) grave accent
È accent grave – pronunciation explained
In French, the è is always pronounced with an [ɛ] sound as in “met” or “let”. Listen to Marie, our voice over artist pronounce the sound: È or è – [ɛ]. The French words père (father) and mère (mother) contain these sounds: père, mère.
Lesson podcast
Example sentences
Père, mère. Mon père et ma mère habitent aux États-Unis.
Father, mother. My father and mother live in the United States.
Frère. Mon frère s’appelle Guillaume et il habite en France.
Brother. My brother’s name is Guillaume and he lives in France.
The word dernière is the feminine form of dernier (last). The -ière spelling pattern can cause confusion among students. Pronouce it: [ee-ehr].
Dernière. C’est la dernière fois que je fais cette erreur.
Last. It’s the last time I make this mistake.
We included préfère as it has both the é with the upward slanting accute accent (accent aigu) as well as the downward slanting è grave accent. The pronunciatoin here is very simple: Pronounce the the first é like [ay] as in “play” and è as like [eh] in “bet”.
Préfère. Je préfère le homard mais j’aime aussi le foie gras.
Prefer. I prefer lobster but I also like foie gras.
Accent grave on other letters
In French, the grave accent can appear over other letters. This is done to distinguish homophones.
- Ou / où – Or / where
- A / à – Has / to or at
Easiest way to type è in French
On a computer, I personally like to use the free tool french.typeit.org for typing French accents.
Conclusion
Et voilà ! You should now have a much better grasp of how to pronounce è accent grave in French. Following this lesson two other useful resources are our lesson covering how ot read French accents as well as French Today’s French accents audio lesson.
