Eau (trigraph)


Eau is a trigraph which occurs in some languages that use the Latin script, such as French and English.

French

In Modern French, is pronounced [Close-mid back rounded vowel|] and often appears at the end of a word. Generally, alternates with in another form of a word, for example, the feminine of chameau is chamelle. There are three main ways of spelling :,, and, out of which is by far the rarest.
In Old French, represented a triphthong, probably pronounced . This triphthong originated from the Proto-French diphthong, which had formed from the sequence of and, where L had vocalized. In the 12th and 13th centuries, both and were used, but soon became the standard spelling. Eau is also a word in French.

English

In English, only exists in words borrowed from French, and so is pronounced similarly 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 the proper names Beaulieu and Beauchamp.