Reforms of French orthography

French orthographywas already (more or less) fixed and, from aphonologicalpoint of view, outdated when itslexicographydeveloped in the late 17th century and theAcadémie françaisewas mandated to establish an "official"prescriptive norm.Still, there was already much debate at the time opposing the tenets of a traditional,etymologicalorthography,and supporting those of areformed,phonologicaltranscriptionof the language.

César-Pierre Richeletchose the latter (reformed) option when he published the first monolingual Frenchdictionaryin 1680, but theAcadémiechose to adhere firmly to tradition in the first edition ofits dictionary(1694).

Various other attempts at simplification followed, culminating in the "rectifications" of 6 December 1990.Further, more radical proposals also exist to simplify the existing writing system,but these have failed to gather much interest to date.

16th century

Spelling and punctuation before the 16th century was highly erratic, butthe introduction of printing in 1470provoked the need for uniformity.

Several Renaissance humanists (working with publishers) proposed reforms in French orthography, the most famous beingJacques Peletier du Manswho developed a phonemic-based spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550). Peletier continued to use his system in all his published works, but his reform was not followed.

18th century

L'Académie s'eſt donc vûe contrainteàfaire dans cette nouvelle Edition,àſon orthographe, pluſieurs changemens qu'elle n'avoit point jugéàpropos d'adopter, lorſqu'elle donna l'Edition précédente.—Académie, 1740, using accents for the first time

The third (1740) and fourth (1762)editionsof the Académie dictionary were very progressive, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether.

Accents,which had been in common use byprintersfor a long time, were finally adopted by the Académie, and manymute consonantswere dropped.

estre→être(to be)

monachal→monacal(monastic)

Many changes suggested in the fourth edition were later abandoned along with thousands ofneologismsadded to it.

Very importantly too, subsequent 18th century editions of the dictionary added the lettersJandVto theFrench Alpha betin replacement of consonantIandU,fi xing many cases ofhomography.

uil→vil(vile)

19th century

Many changes were introduced in the sixth edition of the Académie dictionary (1835), mainly under the influence ofVoltaire.Most importantly, alloidigraphsthat represented/ɛ/were changed toai,thus changing the wholeimperfectconjugationof allverbs.Theborrowingofconnoisseurinto English predates this change; the modern French spelling isconnaisseur.

étois→étais(was)

The spelling of some plural words whose singular form ended inDandTwas modified to reinsert this mute consonant, so as to bring the plural in morphological alignment with the singular. Onlygent,gensretained the old form, because it was perceived that the singular and the plural had different meanings. The Académie had already tried to introduce a similar reform in 1694, but had given up with their dictionary's second edition.

parens→parents(parents)

In 1868, Ambroise Firmin-Didot suggested in his bookObservations sur l'orthographe, ou ortografie, française(Observations on French Spelling) that French phonetics could be better regularized by adding a cedilla beneath the letter "t" in some words. For example, in the suffix-tionthis letter is usually not pronounced as (or close to)/t/in French, but as/sjɔ̃/.It has to be distinctly learned that in words such asdiplomatie(but notdiplomatique) it is pronounced/s/.A similar effect occurs with other prefixes or within words. Firmin-Didot surmised that a new character ţ could be added to French orthography.

20th century

With important dictionaries published at the turn of the 20th century, such as those ofÉmile Littré,Pierre Larousse,Ar sắc ne Darmesteter,and laterPaul Robert,the Académie gradually lost much of its prestige.

Hence, new reforms suggested in 1901,1935, and 1975 were almost totally ignored, except for the replacement ofapostropheswithhyphensin some cases of (potential)elisionin 1935.

grand'mère→grand-mère(grandmother)

Since the 1970s, though, calls for the modernisation of French orthography have grown stronger. In 1989,French prime ministerMichel Rocardappointed theSuperior Council of the French languageto simplify French orthography by regularising it.

Rectifications of 1990

The council, with the help of some Académie members and observers fromFrancophonestates, published reforms that it called"rectifications orthographiques"on 6 December 1990.

Those "rectifications", instead of changing individual spellings, published general rules or lists of modified words. In total, around 2000 words have seen their spelling changed, and Frenchmorphologywas also affected.

Hyphens

Numerals are joined with hyphens:

sept cent mille trois cent vingt et un→sept-cent-mille-trois-cent-vingt-et-un(700,321).

Elements ofcompound nounsare fused together:

• if one element is a verb:porte-monnaie→portemonnaie(wallet)
• inbahuvrihicompounds (where the individual sense of the elements has changed):sage-femme→sagefemme(midwife)
• inonomatopoeias:coin coin→coin-coin(quack).

Loancompounds are also fused together:

hot-dog→hotdog(hot dog).

week-end→weekend,aligning the word with its modern English spelling.

Number

Compound nouns joined with hyphens (or fused) make theirpluralusing normal rules, that is adding a finalsorx,unless the modifier is an adjective (in which case both elements must agree), or the head is adeterminednoun,or a proper noun:

des pèse-lettre→des pèse-lettres(letter scales)

Loanwords also have a regular plural:

lieder→lieds(songs)

Tréma

Thetréma(known as adiaeresisin English) indicating exceptionally that theuis not silent ingu+ vowelcombinations is to be placed on theuinstead of on the following vowel. Also, trémas are added to such words where they were not previously used:

aiguë→aigüe[ɛɡy](fem.acute)

ambiguïté→ambigüité[ɑ̃biɡɥite](ambiguity)

arguer→argüer[aʁɡɥe](to argue)

Atrémais also added to aufollowing ane muetadded to soften ag,to prevent theeucombination being read as[œ]:

gageure→gageüre[ɡaʒyʁ](wager)

Accents

Verbs with theirinfinitiveinéCer(where C can be any consonant) change theirétoèin thefutureandconditional:

je céderai→je cèderai[ʒəsɛd(ə)ʁe](I shall give up)

Additionally, verbs ending ineplaced before aninvertedsubject"je" change theiretoèinstead ofé:

aimé-je ?→aimè-je ?[ɛmɛʒ](do I like?)

Circumflexaccents are removed onianduif they are not needed to distinguish between homographs. They are retained in thesimple pastandsubjunctiveof verbs:

mû→mu(driven), butqu'il mûtunchanged (he must have driven), and

dû(the past participle of the very common irregular verbdevoir,or the noun created from this participle) is kept to make the distinction withdu(the required contraction ofde + le,which meanssomewhen used as an undetermined masculine article, or meansof thewhen used as a preposition).

Wherever accents are missing or wrong because of past errors or omissions or a change of pronunciation, they are added or changed:

receler→recéler[ʁəsele](to receive – stolen goods)

événement→évènement[evɛn(ə)mɑ̃](event)

Accents are also added to loanwords where dictated by French pronunciation:

diesel→diésel[djezɛl](diesel)

Schwa changing into opene

In verbs with an infinitive in-eleror-eter,theopeningof theschwa(/ə/→/ɛ/) could previously be noted either by changing theetoèor by doubling the followinglort,depending on the verb in question. With this reform, only the first rule shall be used except in the cases ofappeler,jeter,and theirderivatives(which continue to usellandttrespectively).

j'étiquette→j'étiquète(I label)

This applies also when those verbs are nominalized using thesuffix-ement:

amoncellement→amoncèlement(pile)

Past participle agreement

Notwithstanding the normal rules (seeFrench verbs), the pastparticiplelaisséfollowed by an infinitive never agrees with theobject:

je les ai laissés partir→je les ai laissé partir(I let them go, literally: I have let them go)

This is an alleged simplification of the rules governing the agreement as applied to a past participle followed by an infinitive. The participlefaitalready followed an identical rule.

Miscellaneous

Many phenomena were considered as "anomalies" and thus "corrected". Some "families" of words from the same root showing inconsistent spellings were uniformized on the model of the most usual word in the "family".

imbécillité→imbécilité(idiocy)

This rule was also extended to suffixes in two cases, actually changing them into totally differentmorphemesaltogether:

cuissot→cuisseau(haunch)

levraut→levreau(leveret)

Isolated words were adjusted to follow older reform where they had been omitted:

douceâtre→douçâtre(sickly sweet)

oignon→ognon(onion)

Lastly, some words have simply seen their spelling simplified, or fixed when it was uncertain:

pagaïe/pagaille/pagaye→pagaille(mess)

punch→ponch(punch)

Application

These "rectifications" were supposed to be applied as of 1991 but, following a period of agitation and the publication of many books such as the Union of copy editors' attacking new rules one by one,André Goosse's defending them, orJosette Rey-Debove's accepting a few (that have been added, as alternative spellings, toLe Robert), they appeared to have become, for a while, dead proposals.

21st century

In 2004, an international institutional effort to revive the 1990 spelling reforms arose. Notably, a French-Belgian-Swissassociation was set up to promote reform. In July of the same year,Microsoftannounced that the French version of their applications would soon comply with the new spelling rules. On 23 March 2005, a version ofEncartawas published using the new spelling, and, on 14 April 2005, an update ofMicrosoft Officewas offered.

Officially,French people,including public workers, are free for an undetermined length of time to continue using the old spelling. The new spelling is "recommended", but both old and new are considered correct.

InQuebec,theOffice québécois de la langue française,which was reluctant at first to apply what it prefers to call the "modernisation", because of the opposition it received in France, announced that it was now applying its rules to new borrowings and neologisms.

More and more publications are modernizing spelling. Le Forum, from the Université de Montréal, and Les Éditions Perce-Neige have adopted the new spelling.

In 2009, several major Belgian publishing groups began applying the new spelling in their online publications.

The 2009 edition of theDictionnaire Le Robertincorporates most of the changes. There are 6000 words that have both the traditional and alternative spellings. The 2011 edition of the Dictionnaire Larousse incorporates all of the changes.

On 3 February 2016, a report by French television channelTF1that the reforms would be applied from the next school year caused wide outrage. A "#JeSuisCirconflexe" campaign ensued onTwitterand the government was accused of "simplifying" the language. However, the government said thecircumflexwould not be eliminated and that pupils could use either the old or new spellings.

There are also fringe movements to further reform the language: for example, one led by the linguistMickael Korvin,who would like to radically simplify French by eliminating accents, punctuation and capital letters and, in 2016, invented a new way to spell French called nouvofrancet.

See also

• Circumflex in French
• French orthography

External links

• http:// orthographe-recommandee.info/(in French)
• RENOUVO(Réseau pour la nouvelle orthographe du français, in French)
• À la découverte de la nouvelle orthographe(Communauté française de Belgique, in French)