Eau is a
trigraph of the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
.
French
In
Modern French
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in No ...
, is pronounced
and may or may not be the same
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
as the one attached to the letter o.
It is used as an ending for several words, like ''berceau'' (
cradle) or ''manteau'' (
coat), usually being the remnant of a suffix (''bercer'' meaning to cradle; ''mante'' meaning
mantle). This is also a word by itself: ''eau'' means
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...
.
English
In
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, only exists in words imported from French, and so is pronounced likewise in almost all cases. Exceptions include ''beauty'' and words derived from it, where it is pronounced , ''bureaucrat'' where it is pronounced , ''
bureaucracy'' where it is pronounced , and (in some contexts) the proper names
Beaulieu and
Beauchamp.
Latin-script trigraphs
{{Latin-script-stub