French alphabet consists of a set of different characters which are not used in English one. There are 5 French accents: the cédille Ç, the acute accent é, the accent circumflex â, ê, î, ô, û, the accent grave à, è, ù, and the accent tréma ë, ï, ü. These small, yet significant symbols indicate pronunciation, including emphasis.
The acute accent denotes the sound /e/; it is used in modern French if there is a combination of e and a constant letter. Grave accent is used to differentiate homophones. Circumflex represents the sounds /ɑ/, /ɛ/ and /o/. Diaeresis points out that a vowel should be pronounced separately from the one coming after.