Things to know about French
French is the official language of France, in addition to being an official language of Haiti, Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and more than fifteen countries in Africa. It is also considered an unofficial second language in many other countries, such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is a Romance language, descended from the Latin spoken in the Roman Empire. The instructions in this topic apply whether you are learning standard French or a regional dialect such as Canadian French, Cajun French, and so on.
Typing French Characters
French is written in the Latin alphabet. However, it also uses characters with diacritic marks, including à, â, ç, é, è, ê, ë, î, ï, ô, ù, û, and ü, to indicate various aspects of pronunciation. There are two methods for typing these characters.
The simplest method is to use the character suggestions. To do so, type the base character for the letter you want, then select the special character from the set of characters which appears.
The other method is to use the virtual keyboard with the layout set to French. (If necessary, you can change the layout by clicking 
and selecting an option in the Keyboard Language menu.)
Locate the character you want on the virtual keyboard, then click on it or press the corresponding key on your physical keyboard. Capital letters, numbers, and certain punctuation marks are available by holding down the Shift key. Note, however, that the positions of some letters and punctuation marks are not the same as on the English keyboard, so you will need to look carefully as you type.
See Typing Accents and Special Characters for details on both typing methods.