Different accents in French

Those little lines and squiggles that you see on top and underneath some letters in French are rather important

The little lines above and below some letters in French are called accents, although you might also hear their posher-sounding name: diacritics. They’re not found in English, so if you’re a native-English speaker learning French, you might have been a little confused by them.

Firstly, there are five different types of accents: acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (ê), trema (ë)…