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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

Regarding usage and history of special character/symbols/diacritics in French?

You are referring to the diacritics (commonly called accents) and ligatures in French.

The accent aigu (soufflé), accent grave (très bien), circonflexe (fête), cédille (ça va) and tréma (Noël) are diacritics, used to change the way the letters they are used on are pronounced.

œ (chef-d’œuvre) and æ (used for Latin or Greek words) are ligatures. The “why” of ligatures is rather complicated and not in the scope of this answer.

Read more here

Your question is very interesting, but quite complex too. First, it is interesting to notice that accents, in French, didn’t exist until the end of the 16th century. The reason why they have been invented is probably partly to lighten the work of typographs, since printing has been invented towards the end of the 15th century, and partly to change the writing of words of whose some consonants had ceased to be pronounced.

So, firstly, the "^" or "accent circonflexe", has been invented to replace the letter "s" in words where that "s" had ceased to be pronounced. This is why you often find in English the old French form, because, in the past centuries, the English language constantly used to import French words, just like the French language does today with English words. So "bastard" became "bâtard", "forest" became "forêt","isle" became "île","apostre" became "apôtre", "coust" became "coût" and so on, but you can still find the original French form in English (except, here, for "apostre" where the English have changed the "r" for an "l", becoming "apostle", and "coust" where they have suppressed the "u" to make it "cost").

The "ô" is a special case, because not only the accent has been added to replace the "s", but also the pronunciation of the "ô" is forced : it must be a "close o" (like in the word "board") instead of an "open o" (like in "hot"), meanwhile the other vowels with accent have no special pronunciation, though the "â" used to be pronounced a bit differently from the "a" (somewhere between "a" and "o"), but that slight distinction has progressively disappeared since the 1970’s. Still, you can sometimes hear the former pronunciation of "â" in many old French films.

Moreover, the "^" has been used in a second case: the need to distinguish two homonyms, like "du" (contraction of "de le") and "dû" (past participle of the verb "devoir"; its feminine form is "due" without "^"), or like "mit" (simple past of the verb "mettre") and "mît" (subjunctive past of the verb "mettre").

The letter "é" has been invented to transcript the corresponding special pronunciation of "e". In the middle-age, the sound "é" at the end of a word was given by adding a consonant, mainly "d" (and sometimes "f"), then that "ed" has been replaced by "é", so "bled" became "blé". And still, one word has kept its ancient form: "pied" is still written "pied" and you can’t write it "pié". On the other hand, the ancient form "clef" can still be used as well as the modern one, "clé" (key).

The "à" has been invented to distinguish homonyms like "la" (article) and "là"(meaning "there") or "à" (meaning "to") and "a" (third person conjugation of "avoir" (to have).

The "tréma" (symbol "¨") has been invented for phonetic reasons: usually, for example, "gue" must be pronounced "g"-"euh" or "g"-"é". But in the adjective "aiguë", you have to pronounce the "u", so you set a trema on the "e" to express that need of pronunciation. It is allowed since the 90’s reform to put the trema on the "u".

The French for non-specialists has ligatures "æ" and "œ" in only a dozen words or so, but some of these words are often used. "æ" sound exactly as if it was replaced by the vowel "é", and "œu" and "œ" as if they were replaced by the vowel "eu": "œuf" (egg), "œuvre" (work(s) of art), "ex æquo", "curriculum vitæ", "et cætera" (and so on), "cœur" and "chœur" (heart and choir; their pronunciation is similar, /kœʁ/), "sœur" (sister), "œil" (eye).

The "cédille" only appears in "ç" which in that case must be pronounced /s/, instead of /k/.

Capitalization should keep all diacritics and ligatures, even in abbreviations like "É.-U." (U.S.A.).

Well there’s still a lot to say, but I can give you that as a beginning…

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?