.lioncourts | French - Learn French in a friendly community! | Page 1

keen peakBOT Jul 17, 2025, 12:57 AM

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Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

shrewd timber Jul 17, 2025, 12:59 AM

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Je m'appelle [name] is the standard introduction

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Moi c'est [name] is more colloquial/informal

elfin umbra Jul 17, 2025, 12:59 AM

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I see, thank you

shrewd timber Jul 17, 2025, 1:06 AM

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elfin umbra I see, thank you

Oh, and it's c'est

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not cédille

elfin umbra Jul 17, 2025, 1:06 AM

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ok wait

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c and ç in the french sense

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do they sound the same in words like ça and c'est

shrewd timber Jul 17, 2025, 1:07 AM

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Yes

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Wait let me find the explanation

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Why that ç instead of c? That's orthography. French C and G are 'soft' when followed by front vowels like I or E like « ciel /sjɛl/, géant /ʒe.ɑ̃/ », becoming an S and a J sound in English (think 'same' and 'James').
When followed by any other vowel, they remain 'hard' with a hard K and G sound like « camion /ka.mjɔ̃/, goût /ɡu/ » (think car and games). So, if you have a soft C or G followed by a non-front vowel, you have to change the spelling. C gets a little tail and becomes Ç which we call the « la cédille » whereas G is often added the letter E to render it soft.

As an example, I'll take the verbs « commencer » and « manger ». As you can see, C and G are followed by a front vowel so they remain soft. Conjugation is fine until we hit « nous » since that person's conjugation ends in -ons. Uh oh, -ons is not a front vowel so how do we render that soft? For commencer, we swap the C with the Ç and for manger, we add an E.
Example with a normal verb like « parler » : « nous parlons, vous parlez »
« commencer » : « nous commençons, vous commencez »
« manger » : « nous mangeons, vous mangez »

elfin umbra Jul 17, 2025, 1:13 AM

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I think I understand

shrewd timber Jul 17, 2025, 1:20 AM

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Take your time

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This is a repost of an earlier answer so I should probably clarify that this is a purely orthographic (writing) thing

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As such, we’re talking about letters here

elfin umbra Jul 17, 2025, 1:25 AM

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I've seen this before when I was studying locations. the words didn't matter when speaking, but the grammar rules were odd

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one second

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shrewd timber Jul 17, 2025, 1:27 AM

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That’s why we have a cédille in « français »; even though <ais> makes an È sound /ɛ/, the first letter represents a back vowel so it gets the treatment

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