French Spelling

An incorrect or missing accent counts as a spelling mistake - learn all about French accents here.

These words are spelled the same (or nearly the same) in French and English but do not necessarily mean the same thing in the two languages.

Learn some common spelling equivalents in French and English - learn to recognize cognates.

There are some gender patterns in suffixes and word endings - certain endings tend to indicate masculine nouns, while other endings favor feminine nouns. These gender patterns can help you to figure out the gender of many French nouns.

French verbs that have a spelling change in some conjugations are called stem-changing verbs. There are seven categories of French stem-changing verbs - learn all about them here.

The gender of nouns tends to be a sticky grammar point, and there are some French nouns which are identical in pronunciation (and even spelling) but which have different meanings depending on gender. This list of common dual-gender nouns may help.

The International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, is a standardized alphabet for phonetic notation: a comprehensive set of symbols and diacritical marks used to transcribe the speech sounds of all languages in a uniform fashion.

Discussion of common spelling errors, including a very long list of oft-mispelled prefixes and suffixes, in French.

Type a word in French and find out if it is spelled correctly.

Information about the spelling simplifications proposed in 1990. In French.

Exercise on the different ways to spell the sounds é (ay) and è (eh) in a French verb.

Fairly basic French spelling and grammar exercise for non-native speakers. The instructions are in French.

Test your French by finding 100 mistakes in an online document.