The alphabet

 The French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures. Also there are some diacritics used in French.

    

   🍀The usual diacritics are the acute, (accent aigu), the grave ( accent grave), the circumflex (accent circonflexe), the diaeresis (tréma), and the cedilla ¸  cédille). Diacritics have no effect on the primary alphabetical order.

  ☄Acute accent or accent aigu (é): over e, indicates uniquely the sound /e/. An é in modern French is often used where a combination of e and a consonant, usually s, would have been used formerly: écouter

   ☄Grave accent or accent grave (à, è, ù): over a or u, used primarily to distinguish homophones: à ("to") vs. a ("has"), ou ("or") vs. où ("where"; the letter ù is used only in this word). Over an e, indicates the sound /ɛ/.
     ☄Circumflex or accent circonflexe (â, ê, î, ô, û): over a, e and o, indicates the sound /ɑ/, /ɛ/ and /o/, respectively, but the distinction a /a/ vs. â /ɑ/ tends to disappear in Parisian French, so they are both pronounced [a]. In Belgian French, ê is pronounced [ɛː].
     ☄Diaeresis or tréma (ë, ï, ü, ÿ): over e, i, u or y, indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël. A diaeresis on y only occurs in some proper names and in modern editions of old French texts.