Bananagrams FRENCH

My students loved it.

It's not French. There are no accent marks on any of the letters. I specifically wanted a French version.Ce n'est pas français. Il n'y a pas de lettres accentuées. Je voulais spécifiquement une version française.

I am a French teacher and have bought several sets of French Bananagrams from different vendors through Amazon. Each set has been the same, and they appear to be the same set that is sold in France. (I double-checked the images and reviews on France’s Amazon website to be sure the sets are the same.) There are no accent marks, but you do not need them! Capitalized French letters are NOT required to have accents anytime - check out the all-caps public signs the next time you are in France. It is understood that a capital E could be an É or È or Ê while playing. The French language uses so many accents so frequently that I would probably find it frustrating to play if some of the letters had accents, and the kids surely would, too. (Really, you want to throw a C-cédille and a I-accent-circonflexe in my hand of 15 tiles?) The French version of games like Bananagrams and Scrabble sold in France and elsewhere DO NOT HAVE ACCENT MARKS!So how do the French and English versions differ? The difference is the selection of letters - a formula more conducive to forming words in French, a language that more frequently uses the letter T, for example, and that uses almost no Ws. Bananagrams français has an EXTRA C, D, L, M, N, O, P, R, T, and V; it has ONE FEWER H, K and Z, and TWO FEWER Gs, Ws and Ys. It comes with French game instructions (English is on the opposite side), and the banana-shaped bag says “Bananagrams français” on it. These are all the differences between my French and English versions of the game.The students like to play this. It’s more exciting than Scrabble, and I was surprised that even some students who don’t seem interested in learning much in French class like to play. I have a colleague who busts out the dice whenever the students play Bananagrams because kids are sooooo creative, and some of them come up with their own versions of a French word game when given free rein. I’m not sure what they come up with, but I’ll try it next time!