What are these 2 dots?

How can 2 little dots make such a difference to your speaking and spelling in French?

Are you messing up by putting them in the wrong place?

Here’s another really quick mini-lesson to help you enjoy being just a little bit more French today, as requested by many of my learners. 

Learn: 

• What those 2 dots are on certain letters in French

• How they change the pronunciation 

• How to type them on the keyboard

What are these 2 dots?

Have you ever noticed these 2 dots above some vowels? There are just a few words in French.

However, they do exist and the name of this punctuation is tréma.

In addition, you’ll spot them on only 3 vowels:

• ë

• ï

• ü

What do they sound like?

Not only is the tréma visual but you can also hear it. Let me explain.

Whenever you see it on top of the vowels, you’ll deal with 2 different vowels.

Indeed, you will produce the first vowel and then the second one. 

You will see it with our next examples and I invite you to watch the video to pay attention to the pronunciation.

Examples with ë. 

In the first place, you will never see the tréma with the vowel a.

Therefore, let’s start with the letter e.

I can bet that you know already the word “Noël” meaning Christmas.

If we split the word, you will observe the 2 sounds o and é.

Here’s an example for you:

• À Noël, les français mangent beaucoup de chocolats. >>> At Christmas, French people eat a lot of chocolates.

Let’s have another example:

• Il adore le canoë. >>> He loves canoeing.

In this word, you’ll pronounce the vowel o then é in French.

Examples with ï.

Now, I have several examples with the letter ï.

• Il faut du maïs pour faire du pop-corn. >>> One needs corn to make popcorn.

You go from the a sound to the i sound. The same for the next word:

• Il croit tout ce qu’elle dit. Il est naïf. >>> He believes all she says. He’s naive.

Next, you have the sound o to the sound i or the nasal in.

• Cette femme est une héroïne. >>> This woman is a heroine.

The following one deals with the nasal sound:

• Je ne pense pas que ce soit une coïncidence. >>> I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

You can’t find ö anymore!

Very quickly let’s see something that doesn’t exist anymore and it’s a word with ö.

• Il chante extraördinairement. >>> He sings extraordinarily.

Why has it disappeared? It’s very simple. You naturally pronounce all the vowels. Therefore, it was simplified.

Examples with ü.

Time to play with the letter u.

The first example is with a word we don’t use every day: capharnaüm ( capernaüm)

• Cette chambre est un vrai capharnaüm. >>> This bedroom is a true capernaum / chaos. 

Then, we have aigüe (acute):

• Sa voix est très aigüe. >>> Her voice is very high.

And, this association:

• Emmaüs est une association qui aide les pauvres. >>> Emmaus is an association that helps the poor.

Do these dots really matter?

The answer is oui! And I will prove it with 2 examples.

First, let’s review acute in its 2 forms:

• aigu >>> masculine singular
• aiguë >>> feminine singular

What can you see? Not only there’s an extra e but also the tréma.

For the masculine, there’s no fuss because there are 2 syllables.

• aigu >>> eggu

With the feminine, it’s another story…

Indeed, when you add an e, you would say this:

• aigue >>> egggg.

Why? Because the final e is silent. Therefore, there’s just one syllable.

That’s the reason why, we need the tréma and obtain this sound:

• aiguë >>> eggu

How to type the tréma on the keyboard.

You may want to find on a keyboard. On Apple, it’s rather simple.

Simply long hold on a letter and the accent option pop up and you can choose the tréma one.

On another computer, on the French keyboard, press Ctrl, Shift, and type “¨” key.

Release the keys and type the vowel “e”, “i” or “u”. And voilà!

The use of the tréma.

In conclusion, you have seen that some French words have two dots on specific vowels: e, i, and o.

Moreover, you produce the sound of two vowels. Don’t worry because a limited list of words work with the tréma.

Here are other mini-lessons to help you:

How to pronounce WELCOME (BIENVENUE) in French 

Never say chercher (POUR)

PSST . . . If you haven't seen my FREE masterclass to work out what's holding you back from speaking French with more confidence (it’s my speciality) then click here: 👉🏾 FREE MASTERCLASS 

Fun question: do you know some typical French names from Brittany with the tréma like Éloïse?