French orthography

The French alphabet uses a number of diacritics, including the circumflex, diaeresis, acute, and grave accents, as well as ligatures.

However, ⟨k⟩ is common in the metric prefix kilo- (originally from Greek χίλια khilia "a thousand"), e.g. kilogramme, kilomètre, kilowatt, kilohertz.

A tilde (⟨◌̃⟩) above ⟨n⟩ is occasionally used in French for words and names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated into the language (e.g., El Niño, piñata).

⟨æ⟩ (French: e dans l'a, a-e entrelacé or a, e collés/liés) is rare, appearing only in some words of Latin and Greek origin like tænia, ex æquo, cæcum, æthuse (as named dog’s parsley).

Some of these are native French words, with the pronunciation /œ/ or /ø/, e.g. chœur "choir" /kœʁ/, cœur "heart" /kœʁ/, mœurs "moods (related to moral)" /mœʁ, mœʁs/, nœud "knot" /nø/, sœur "sister" /sœʁ/, œuf "egg" /œf/, œuvre "work (of art)" /œvʁ/, vœu "vow" /vø/.

In the first case, it is a vestige of the spelling in the word's original language (usually Latin or Greek) maintained in modern French, e.g. the use of ⟨ph⟩ in téléphone, ⟨th⟩ in théorème, or ⟨ch⟩ in chaotique.

In the second case, a digraph is due to an archaic pronunciation, such as ⟨eu⟩, ⟨au⟩, ⟨oi⟩, ⟨ai⟩, and ⟨œu⟩, or is merely a convenient way to expand the twenty-six-letter alphabet to cover all relevant phonemes, as in ⟨ch⟩, ⟨on⟩, ⟨an⟩, ⟨ou⟩, ⟨un⟩, and ⟨in⟩.

Some cases are a mixture of these or are used for purely pragmatic reasons, such as ⟨ge⟩ for /ʒ/ in il mangeait ('he ate'), where the ⟨e⟩ serves to indicate a "soft" ⟨g⟩ inherent in the verb's root, similar to the significance of a cedilla to ⟨c⟩.

Ø auxquels, auxquelles /o/ curaçao /e/ et, pieds (and any other noun plural ending in (consonant other than t)+s)/a/ femme, solennel, fréquemment, (and other adverbs ending in -emment)[8]/œ/ Gennevilliers (see also -er)(see also ae) before silent ⟨t⟩ The spelling of French words of Greek origin is complicated by a number of digraphs which originated in the Latin transcriptions.

Further, many words in the international scientific vocabulary were constructed in French from Greek roots and have kept their digraphs (e.g. stratosphère, photographie).

The Oaths of Strasbourg from 842 is the earliest text written in the early form of French called Romance or Gallo-Romance.

Vulgar Latin, a generally lower register of Classical Latin spoken by the Roman soldiers, merchants and even by patricians in quotidian speech, was adopted by the natives and evolved slowly, taking the forms of different spoken Roman vernaculars according to the region of the empire.

With consolidation of royal power, beginning in the 13th century, the Francien vernacular, the langue d'oil variety then in usage in the Île-de-France (region around Paris), took, little by little, over the other languages and evolved toward Classic French.

The most significant changes have been: In October 1989, Michel Rocard, then-Prime Minister of France, established the High Council of the French Language (Conseil supérieur de la langue française) in Paris.

They were likewise submitted to the Académie française, which endorsed them unanimously, saying: "Current orthography remains that of usage, and the 'recommendations' of the High Council of the French language only enter into play with words that may be written in a different manner without being considered as incorrect or as faults.

Computer software may aid or hinder the application of this rule, depending on the degree of localisation, as it is marked differently from most other Western punctuation.