Advertisement

Language and culture For Members

13 slightly weird facts about the French language

Oliver Gee
Oliver Gee - [email protected]
13 slightly weird facts about the French language
Photo: WikiCommons

To mark International Francophonie Day, we have collected together some of the more unusual features of the French language.

Advertisement

1 The longest word in the dictionary is anticonstitutionnellement at 25 letters. 

2 The longest French word of all is the full chemical name for thiamine which has 49 letters. Click here if you want to see it in its entirety, we don't dare risk spelling it incorrectly. 

3 The shortest French word with all the vowels is oiseau (bird).

4 Meanwhile oiseaux (birds) is the longest word where you don't pronounce any of the letters individually. 

5 There are more words that have just one letter than there are letters in the alphabet. While you've heard of words like y and a, there are also accented words like à.

But the French also count single letters as words like j' (as in j'aime) and c' (as in c'est). This would be the equivalent of counting 't as a word in English (as in the word don't) - and some English dictionaries actually do this

6 There's only one French word with the letter ù, and that's où (where). Yet the letter still gets its own key on the French keyboard.

READ ALSO What annoys foreigners the most about the French 'Azerty' keyboard

7 The word simple doesn't rhyme with any other French word. Neither does quatorze, quinze or monstre

Advertisement

8 French is the only language (besides English) that's spoken on all the continents. Much of west Africa is French speaking, Canada in North America, French Guiana in south America, Vanuatu in Oceania. 

9 The longest name of a French town is Saint-Remy-en-Bouzemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson in the Marne département, north eastern France.

10 There are several words that have three e's in a row, like créée, which means created, if the object is feminine.

11 Oeil (eye) is the only word that starts with a different letter when in plural yeux (eyes).

Advertisement

12 The most common letter in French is e, recurring at a frequency of 14.7 percent. It's followed by s at 7.9 percent and a at 7.6 percent. In comparison, in English the top three are e at 12.7 percent, t at 9.1 percent, and a at 8.2 percent. 

The least common letter is the ï (known as a trema) at 0.005 percent. It's in words like naïve, aïoli, maïs  (naive, garlic mayonnaise and corn).

13 And lastly, the shortest town name is Y in Somme, northern France.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also