French accents - part 2 (French Essentials Lesson 18)

Today folks, let's have a look at another accent, the accent circonflex. Now, what is an accent circonflex? Well, I call it the hat. The hat. It's a little hat, basically, that you put on the letters A or E or I or O or U. So A, E, I, O, U. All these letters, these vowels can have an accent circonflex, okay? So you're going to tell me, what is it for? Well, when you have it on the E, it makes the sound E, okay? A bit like an accent grave in effect, okay? And you can prove me wrong, I don't know, but it depends where you are in France, okay? And we might pronounce our E differently. That's the way I pronounce it. I am from the Burgundy region and that's the way we do it. So E, okay? E. Now, you will find, you will find the accent circonflex on words such as forêt. Can you see that? Forêt. You will find the accent such as Okay. I'll tell you in a minute what they mean, by the way. I'm going to concentrate on these examples. And the reason why I did not translate them, because there is a trick to it. In old French, and probably it goes back to maybe when the English and French Normans invaded back in 1100 England. Not that I know nothing about history, as you can tell, but somewhere in the 11th century. Anyway, what happened? Well, the French invaded England and came and spoke French and maybe somehow the languages melted together. And what happens? The accent circonflex, if you look very carefully, replaces an S. So you could, in effect, if you knew that after the letter which has an accent circonflex, there is an S, you would know what forêt is. Have a look. Try. If you put the S after the E, ignore the accent circonflex. What does it become? Forest. Exactly. It becomes forest. Okay. So we know that forêt is a forest. Now have a look at ma. Now remember, where is the accent circonflex? Yeah, on the A. Now put the S after the A. Mast. Mast, as in the mast of the boat. Okay. Le ma. Le ma. Have a look at pat. Now pat is slightly more tricky, but you could, you could. Paste or pasta. Okay. Paste or pasta. And that means dough as well. La pâte. Okay. La pâte. Okay. It means pasta. Now have a look at fête. Now fête, if you put an S after the E, it means party. Okay. Now have a look at hôtel. Well, hôtel. Hostel. Exactly. It's an hôtel. And hôpital. Hospital. Can you see the pattern? What about the last one? Last one is a little tricky. Uh-huh. Now this one changes slightly, but it's master. Master. Okay. Master something. Important person. Okay. Can you see where the circonflex comes from now? Yeah. Cool. I like, I like this little trick. I really love teaching that. Okay, folks, that's it on the accent circonflex. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I, as I, uh, as I enjoyed teaching you. Check out the other videos on accents because they are very, very useful. And, uh, why don't you join my little community and subscribe to my website and have a look at my awesome LearnFrenchWithAlexa.com website. That's it for me. Au revoir. A bientot. Bisous, bisous.