French guides · Foundations + audio
The French alphabet: same 26 letters, almost all different names.
French uses exactly the same 26 letters as English, in the same order — which sounds like good news until someone spells their surname at you. Nearly every letter has a different name, two of them are effectively swapped with English, and five accent marks sit on top of the system doing real work. Here is every letter with audio, the accents explained, and the trick for spelling your own name out loud without being handed the wrong email address.
All 26 letters, with sound
Press Hear on any row for a French voice. The “say it” column is deliberately plain English rather than phonetic symbols — capitals mark the stressed part.
| Letter | French name | Say it | Listen |
|---|---|---|---|
| A a | a | ah | |
| B b | bé | bay | |
| C c | cé | say | |
| D d | dé | day | |
| E e | e | uh | |
| F f | effe | eff | |
| G g | gé | zhay | |
| H h | ache | ash | |
| I i | i | ee | |
| J j | ji | zhee | |
| K k | ka | kah | |
| L l | elle | ell | |
| M m | emme | emm | |
| N n | enne | enn | |
| O o | o | oh | |
| P p | pé | pay | |
| Q q | qu | kew | |
| R r | erre | air | |
| S s | esse | ess | |
| T t | té | tay | |
| U u | u | ew | |
| V v | vé | vay | |
| W w | double vé | doo-bluh-VAY | |
| X x | ixe | eeks | |
| Y y | i grec | ee-GREK | |
| Z z | zède | zed |
The Hear buttons use whatever French voice your device already has. On some desktop browsers there is none, and the buttons hide themselves rather than reading French with an English accent — which would teach you the wrong thing. The written column works on its own.
The four letters that catch everyone
Twenty-two of the twenty-six are close enough to guess. These four are not, and between them they cause almost every spelling mix-up.
| Letter | French says | Why it trips you |
|---|---|---|
| G | zhay | Sounds like the English letter J |
| J | zhee | Sounds like the English letter G |
| E | uh | English ears hear a soft grunt, not a letter |
| I | ee | Sounds like the English letter E |
Spell out an email address containing a G or a J and this single confusion will send your message into the void. The safe move is to add a word: G comme Georges (“G as in Georges”), J comme Jacques. French speakers do this constantly — it is not a beginner’s crutch.
The same fix rescues E and I: E comme Émile, I comme Irène. France has an official spelling alphabet much like NATO’s, but in practice people invent the names on the spot and everyone copes.
The five accents, and what each one does
Accents are not decoration. Two of them change the sound outright, one changes a consonant, one splits vowels apart, and one is a fossil of a letter that vanished five hundred years ago.
| Mark | French name | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| é | accent aigu (ak-SAHN ay-GEW) | Makes E say a bright “ay” | été |
| è | accent grave (ak-SAHN GRAHV) | Makes E say an open “eh” | mère |
| ê | accent circonflexe | Marks an S that French dropped | forêt |
| ë | tréma (TRAY-mah) | Splits two vowels into separate sounds | Noël |
| ç | cédille (say-DEE-yuh) | Forces C to say “s” before a, o, u | français |
Wherever you see ê, â or ô, an s used to sit just after the vowel — and English usually still has it. Forêt was forest. Hôpital was hospital. Fête was feste, our feast. Once you notice it, the hat becomes a free vocabulary hint.
The grave accent on à and ù does something different again — it changes nothing about the sound and exists purely to separate look-alike words: a (has) from à (to), and ou (or) from où (where).
The cédille is the only mark that lands on a consonant. C normally says “k” before a, o and u — so garçon would be “gar-KON” without it. The little tail forces the “s”: gar-SOHN.
Spelling your name out loud
This is the moment the alphabet stops being trivia — at a hotel desk, on the phone, giving an email address. Three extra words do most of the work.
| You need | French | Say it |
|---|---|---|
| How do you spell that? | Comment ça s’écrit ? | ko-MAHN sah say-KREE |
| a double letter (LL) | deux L | duh ELL |
| capital letter | majuscule | mah-zhew-SKEWL |
| lower case | minuscule | mee-new-SKEWL |
| é | e accent aigu | uh ak-SAHN ay-GEW |
| @ | arobase | ah-ro-BAHZ |
| . (dot) | point | pwan |
| - (hyphen) | tiret | tee-REH |
| _ (underscore) | tiret bas | tee-REH BAH |
French says deux L rather than spelling “L, L”. So Miller becomes M, I, deux L, E, R — emm, ee, duh ELL, uh, air. Getting that one habit right makes you sound dramatically more fluent than the individual letters do.
Letters French barely uses
Three letters are near-strangers in French, and knowing that tells you something useful about any word containing them: it probably came from somewhere else.
| Letter | Where it shows up | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| W | The rarest of all — almost entirely borrowings | week-end, wagon, wifi |
| K | Loanwords and brand names; French prefers C or QU | kilo, koala, ketchup |
| H | Always written, never pronounced | homme, heure, hôtel |
French H is never sounded. Yet some words behave as if a consonant were there — le héros keeps its le, while l’homme contracts. That is the difference between a “mute h” and an “aspirated h”, and even French schoolchildren simply learn which words are which.
One more shape you will meet: œ, as in sœur (sister) and cœur (heart). It is called e dans l’o — “e in the o” — and it is a ligature, not a twenty-seventh letter. Typing oe instead is understood everywhere.
Reciting it, the French way
French children learn the alphabet in the same order you did, usually to the same tune — the one English speakers know as Twinkle Twinkle, which began life as the French melody Ah ! vous dirai-je, maman. Mozart wrote variations on it. It was French first.
Try the whole run once out loud, slowly, in four groups. Chunking is what makes it stick:
| Group | Say it | Listen |
|---|---|---|
| A B C D E F G | ah · bay · say · day · uh · eff · zhay | |
| H I J K L M N | ash · ee · zhee · kah · ell · emm · enn | |
| O P Q R S T U | oh · pay · kew · air · ess · tay · ew | |
| V W X Y Z | vay · doo-bluh-vay · eeks · ee-grek · zed |
The letter names are only the door. What actually makes French readable is knowing how letters behave in combination — why eau is one “oh”, why final consonants go quiet, why oi always says “wah”. That is a different guide, and it is the one that changes how much you understand.
Hear it, then say it
Reading about French isn’t speaking French.
Cocoon French teaches through slow, visual stories you understand from the first line — and a free Club account includes full lessons plus a speaking drill that listens to you say the French out loud and tells you how you did. No card required.
Quick answers
The alphabet, answered.
What people ask once they have heard the letters.