There are a range of different accents used on vowels in French. Two of them are very useful in helping you to guess the meaning of a word, even if you don’t know it.

The circumflex accent ^ (un accent circonflexe) and the acute accent ´ (un accent aigu) are often used to replace a missing letter s.

Take for example the word “la forêt.” It used to be written “la forest,” but because nobody bothered to pronounce the s, the French Academy eventually decided to replace it with a circumflex accent. So if you didn’t already recognise “la forêt” as meaning “the forest,” all you have to do is to insert the missing s and the meaning of the word will become clearer.

This method also works with an acute accent ´ on the letter e, which looks like é. The acute accent also hides a missing s.

Take the French word “un écuyer.” Unless you already know this word, its meaning may be far from obvious. But remember that the acute accent hides a missing s. That would change the spelling to “escuyer.” If you imagine pronouncing this word as if you knew nothing about French pronunciation, it might take you closer to its real meaning of “squire” or “esquire.”

Another example is the word “un écureil.” Add the missing s to get “escureil.” Pronounce it as badly as possible. This gives you the English word “squirrel.”

Some words are less obvious. “La fenêtre” means “the window,” which doesn’t look at all like the French word. The circumflex accent hides the missing s, so the word used to be spelled “fenestre,” which is closer to the original Latin word “fenestra” meaning “opening” or “passage.” This word is found in the English word “fenestration,” which is the arrangement of windows in a building.

“Une tempête” has a missing s. Replacing it gives you “tempeste,” which means “storm.”

“Une découverte” has a missing s that becomes the English word “discovery.”

It’s important to note that not all acute and circumflex accents hide a missing s. For example the word “une prédiction” just means “a prediction,” not “presdiction,” which doesn’t mean anything.