French uses a different set of quotes than English, mostly those : « (open) and » (close). I would therefore enclose a sentence « like this » (including non-breakable spaces after and before).
macOS forever had autocorrect for this. Type the English, system comma inverted quotes " (which is the only character featuring on AZERTY French keyboards) and the system will intelligently replace the character with the correct French quotes. The rules it employs are as follows: if a space or punctuation sign precedes the " that has just been typed, or it is at the beginning of a sentence, it will replace the character with the open quote and a non-breakable space (because the content enclosed in the quotes will come after). "→ « .
The opposite happens when the English quotes follow a letter – you obviously want to close the quotes, so foo" → foo » automatically.
Bear does not work correctly with the opening quote system replacement in bullet lists. Typing - " (open a bullet list, followed by an opening quote " should result in - « (since obviously you open a new item).
It does not, it results in - » (dash, space, non-breakable space, closing quotes) :
Which is weird, because the preceding space should be taken into account by the system and result in « normally. I am guessing the Bear parser jumps in to present the list before the system can intervene, and then the system believes something precedes the quote, forcing it to close. This also happens in Panda.
However, they behave correctly in other scenarios I could find.
Other apps parse this correctly (tested with Ulysses).