Le « a » de ce mot prend un accent grave.

Because the sentence is talking about the letter itself, not using it as part of a normal word.

In French, when you mention a word, letter, or expression as an object of discussion, it is often set off with French quotation marks: « ». So Le « a » means the letter a.

English does the same kind of thing, often with quotation marks or italics:

• The a in this word...
• The letter a...

Here, le is the definite article meaning the.

French often treats letters as nouns when talking about them, and they commonly take a masculine article:

• le a
• le b
• le t

So Le « a » means the letter a.

Literally, it means of this word.

So the structure is:

• Le « a » = the a
• de ce mot = of this word

French often uses this pattern to identify a part of something:

• la première lettre de ce mot = the first letter of this word
• le son de ce mot = the sound of this word

In natural English, we would usually say the a in this word, but French says the a of this word.

Because mot is a masculine singular noun that starts with a consonant.

The demonstrative adjectives are:

• ce before a masculine singular noun starting with a consonant: ce mot
• cet before a masculine singular noun starting with a vowel or silent h: cet accent
• cette for feminine singular: cette lettre

So:

• ce mot = this word
• cet accent = this accent

Prend is the third-person singular form of prendre.

Here, French uses prendre in the sense of to take or to receive:

• prendre un accent = to take an accent / to have an accent added

So Le « a » de ce mot prend un accent grave means that this a is written with a grave accent.

The subject is singular:

• Le « a » = one letter

So the verb is singular too:

• prend

An accent grave is the accent mark ` placed over a vowel.

Examples:

• à
• è
• ù

It is called grave because of its traditional grammatical name, not because it sounds serious. In French spelling terminology:

• accent grave = `
• accent aigu = ´
• accent circonflexe = ^

So in this sentence, the a becomes à.

Yes.

If the a prend un accent grave, it is written as à.

This is important in French because a and à are different written forms and often different words:

• a = has
• à = to, at, in

So the sentence is saying that, in this word, the letter should be spelled à, not plain a.

Because in French, many adjectives come after the noun.

Here:

• accent = noun
• grave = adjective

So French says:

• accent grave
• accent aigu
• accent circonflexe

This is normal French word order, even though English usually says grave accent.

Yes, that would also be possible.

• Le « a » de ce mot... focuses directly on the letter itself.
• La lettre a de ce mot... explicitly says the letter a.

Both are understandable, but Le « a »... is a very natural way to refer to a letter when discussing spelling.

Prend is pronounced roughly like pron with a nasal vowel, but there is no exact English equivalent.

A simple guide:

• pr as in English press
• the en is nasal
• the final d is normally silent

So it sounds approximately like prahn or pron, but through the nose.

In the full sentence, learners should also notice:

• mot: final t is silent
• accent: the final t is usually pronounced
• grave: the final v is pronounced