Misplaced accent mark alert! ~ The Linguistics Zone

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Misplaced accent mark alert!

In a recent issue of Parade magazine, there was a headline titled Ç'est Magnifique. Look carefully though; notice anything wrong with it?



If you are not familiar with French, there is an unnecessary accent mark (diacritic) underneath the C in C'est. It looks like a hook, or a "5" (which we used to call it in elementary French classes!). The proper term for it is cedilla.
In French c'est is a contraction of ce est which means "this is". There is no need for the C to take a cedilla. It was probably put there by some unknowing editor just to make the phrase look "more French".

The purpose of the cedilla in French is to make sure certain words with a C in it take an S sound, rather than a K sound. For instance, reçu ("received"), requires the cedilla to make the C have an S sound, otherwise the K sound would be assumed since the C precedes a U. The infinitive form of the verb is recevoir, which needs no cedilla since the C is assumed to have the S sound if it precedes an E.

110 comments:

Mark Base said...

The same also applies to c's that preceed i's - as in ici ("here"). The cedilla is would be need to the "hard vowels", which are a, o, and u. e and i are considered "soft" and don't take the cedilla.

There ya go!

john said...

Yeah, that is correct, thanks for the comment Mark. I just never saw the cedilla used in a contraction (as in c'), I do not think that is allowed.

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intresting, would not have thought about it that way myself.

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What a strange looking accent mark!

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Very intresting, would not have thought about it that way myself

Anonymous said...

Once again another good point to remember. Thanks for shedding light to us!

Anonymous said...

Unless the accent don't change the meaning of the word for a bad word I think we are fine.

Anonymous said...

How important it is to put the accents in the right place.

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It is very important it is to put the accents in the right place.

Krist said...

Urrr...sorry I don't get it. I just can't speak French. :) Thanks anyway.

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Well I'm not that really good in french language but I'm pretty much familiar with this hook. I always see this in the books of my wife who is very good in french. I think it follows vowels like mention in the first comment. Anyway, thanks for this great info!

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Kreuzfahrt said...

Yeah, that is correct, thanks for the comment Mark. I just never saw the cedilla used in a contraction (as in c')

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I actually like it when foreign cultures co-opt and language and make it more foreign. i.e. making C'est look more french by adding a cedilla. The Japanese do hilarious things with English! I think it's good fun!

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Yeah, that is correct, thanks for the comment Mark. I just never saw the cedilla used in a contraction (as in c'), I do not think that is allowed.

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