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French orthography was already (more or less) fixed and, from aphonological point of view, outdated when itslexicography developed in the late 17th century and theAcadémie française was mandated to establish an "official"prescriptive norm.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, phonologicaltranscription of the language.
César-Pierre Richelet chose the latter (reformed) option when he published the first monolingual Frenchdictionary in 1680, but theAcadémie chose 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.[1] Further, more radical proposals also exist to simplify the existing writing system,[2] but these have failed to gather much interest to date.
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Spelling and punctuation before the 16th century was highly erratic, butthe introduction of printing in 1470 provoked the need for uniformity.
Several Renaissance humanists (working with publishers) proposed reforms in French orthography, the most famous beingJacques Peletier du Mans who 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.
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The third (1740) and fourth (1762)editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether.
Accents, which had been in common use byprinters for a long time, were finally adopted by the Académie, and manymute consonants were dropped.
Many changes suggested in the fourth edition were later abandoned along with thousands ofneologisms added to it.
Very importantly too, subsequent 18th century editions of the dictionary added the lettersJ andV to theFrench alphabet in replacement of consonantI andU, fixing many cases ofhomography.
Many changes were introduced in the sixth edition of the Académie dictionary (1835), mainly under the influence ofVoltaire. Most importantly, alloidigraphs that represented/ɛ/ were changed toai, thus changing the wholeimperfectconjugation of allverbs. Theborrowings ofconnoisseur andfoible into English predate this change; the modern French spellings areconnaisseur andfaible.
The spelling of some plural words whose singular form ended inD andT was modified to reinsert this mute consonant, so as to bring the plural in morphological alignment with the singular. Onlygent,gens retained 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.
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-tion this 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.
With important dictionaries published at the turn of the 20th century, such as those ofÉmile Littré,Pierre Larousse,Arsène Darmesteter, and laterPaul Robert, the Académie gradually lost much of its prestige.
Hence, new reforms suggested in 1901,[3] 1935, and 1975 were almost totally ignored, except for the replacement ofapostrophes withhyphens in some cases of (potential)elision in 1935.
Since the 1970s, though, calls for the modernisation of French orthography have grown stronger. In 1989,French prime ministerMichel Rocard appointed theSuperior Council of the French language to simplify French orthography by regularising it.
 | It has been suggested that this section besplit out into another article titled1990 French orthography rectification. (Discuss)(January 2022) |
The council, with the help of some Académie members and observers fromFrancophone states, published reforms that it called"rectifications orthographiques" on 6 December 1990.[1]
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 Frenchmorphology was also affected.
Numerals are joined with hyphens:
Elements ofcompound nouns are fused together:
Loan compounds are also fused together:
Compound nouns joined with hyphens (or fused) make theirplural using normal rules, that is adding a finals orx, unless the modifier is an adjective (in which case both elements must agree), or the head is adeterminednoun, or a proper noun:
Loanwords also have a regular plural:
Thetréma (known as adiaeresis in English) indicating exceptionally that theu is not silent ingu + vowel combinations is to be placed on theu instead of on the following vowel. Also, trémas are added to such words where they were not previously used:
Atréma is also added to au following ane muet added to soften ag, to prevent theeu combination being read as[œ]:
Verbs with theirinfinitive inéCer (where C can be any consonant) change theiré toè in thefuture andconditional:
Additionally, verbs ending ine placed before aninvertedsubject "je" change theire toè instead ofé:
Circumflex accents are removed oni andu if they are not needed to distinguish between homographs. They are retained in thesimple past andsubjunctive of verbs:
Wherever accents are missing or wrong because of past errors or omissions or a change of pronunciation, they are added or changed:
Accents are also added to loanwords where dictated by French pronunciation:
In verbs with an infinitive in-eler or-eter, theopening of theschwa (/ə/ →/ɛ/) could previously be noted either by changing thee toè or by doubling the followingl ort, 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 usell andtt respectively).
This applies also when those verbs are nominalized using thesuffix-ement:
Notwithstanding the normal rules (seeFrench verbs), the pastparticiplelaissé followed by an infinitive never agrees with theobject:
This is an alleged simplification of the rules governing the agreement as applied to a past participle followed by an infinitive. The participlefait already followed an identical rule.
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".
This rule was also extended to suffixes in two cases, actually changing them into totally differentmorphemes altogether:
Isolated words were adjusted to follow older reform where they had been omitted:
Lastly, some words have simply seen their spelling simplified, or fixed when it was uncertain:
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 become, for a while, dead proposals.
In 2004, an international institutional effort to revive the 1990 spelling reforms arose. Notably, a French-Belgian-Swiss association was set up to promote reform. In July of the same year,Microsoft announced that the French version of their applications would soon comply with the new spelling rules. On 23 March 2005, a version ofEncarta was published using the new spelling, and, on 14 April 2005, an update ofMicrosoft Office was 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.[citation needed]
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.[4]
The 2009 edition of theDictionnaire Le Robert incorporates 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 channelTF1[5] that the reforms would be applied from the next school year caused wide outrage. A "#JeSuisCirconflexe" campaign ensued onTwitter and the government was accused of "simplifying" the language. However, the government said thecircumflex would not be eliminated and that pupils could use either the old or new spellings.[6][7][8]
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.[9]