This article is part of the series on: Image File history File links Flag_of_La_Francophonie. ... French language French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ...

Dialects and History Orthography Reforms Use of the circumflex Phonology Liaison Elision Grammar Verbs Conjugation Verb morphology Articles and determiners Adverbs Pronouns Personal Pronouns

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The orthography of French was already more or less fixed, and from a phonological point of view outdated, when its lexicography developed in the late 17th century and the Académie française was mandated to establish an "official" prescriptive norm. Dialects of the French language are spoken in France and around the world. ... French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended from Latin) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in Northern France. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The circumflex (^) is one of the five diacritics used in the French language. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In French, elision (from elide, to leave out or omit) refers to the practise of combining two logically separate words into one for the convenience of pronunication in live conversation. ... French has a grammar similar to that of the other Romance languages. ... French verbs are a complex area of French grammar, with a conjugation scheme that allows for three finite moods (with anywhere from one to five synthetic tenses), three non-finite moods, three voices, and two aspects. ... Main article: French verbs French verbs are divided into three conjugations (conjugaisons) by the ending of their infinitives: -er verbs, -ir verbs, and -re verbs. ... In French, a verb is inflected to reflect its mood and tense, as well as to agree with its subject in person and number. ... In French, articles and determiners are required on almost every common noun; much more so than in English. ... French adverbs, like their English counterparts, are used to modify adjectives, other adverbs, and verbs or clauses. ... French pronouns are inflected to indicate their role in the sentence (subject, direct object, and so on), as well as to reflect the person, gender, and number of their referrents. ... Personal pronouns in French: The French possessive pronouns (mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, notre, nos, votre, votre, vos, leur, leur, leurs) are technically adjectives because they decline into masculine, feminine and plural forms and further agree with their heads (not their antecedents). ... The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ... Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... Lexicography is either of two things Practical lexicography is the art or craft of writing dictionaries. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... The Académie française In the French educational system an académie LAcadémie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language. ...

Still, there was already much debate at the time opposing the tenets of a traditional, etymological orthography, and those of a reformed, phonological transcription of the language. Not to be confused with Entomology, the study of insects. ... Spelling reform generally attempts to introduce a logical structure connecting the spelling and pronunciation of words. ... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ...

César-Pierre Richelet chose the latter option when he published the first monolingual French dictionary in 1680, but the Académie chose to adhere firmly to the tradition, "that distinguishes men of letters from ignoramuses and simple women", in the first edition of its dictionary (1694). A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. ... Events First Portuguese governor was appointed to Macau The Swedish city Karlskrona was founded as the Royal Swedish Navy relocated there. ... The Dictionnaire de lAcadémie française is the official dictionary of the French language. ... Events February 6 - The colony Quilombo dos Palmares is destroyed. ...

It has since then accepted a few reforms and initiated, not always successfully, numerous others.

16th century

Spelling and punctuation before the 16th century was highly erratic, but the introduction of printing in 1470 provoked the need for uniformity. Events May 15 - Charles VIII of Sweden who had served three terms as King of Sweden dies. ...

Several Renaissance humanists (working with publishers) proposed reforms in French orthography, the most famous being Jacques Peletier du Mans who developed a phonetic-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. Jacques Peletier du Mans (1517 Le Mans – 1582 Paris) was a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance. ...

18th century

L'Académie s'eſt donc vûe contrainte à faire dans cette nouvelle Edition, à ſon orthographe, pluſieurs changemens qu'elle n'avoit point jugé à propos d'adopter, lorſqu'elle donna l'Edition précédente. — Académie, 1740, using accents for the first time

The third (1740) and fourth (1762) editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive ones, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether. Events May 31 - Friedrich II comes to power in Prussia upon the death of his father, Friedrich Wilhelm I. October 20 - Maria Theresia of Austria inherits the Habsburg hereditary dominions (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and present-day Belgium). ... 1762 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Version is a state of an object or concept that varies from its previous state or condition. ...

Accents, that had been in common use by printers for a long time, were finally adopted by the Académie, and many mute consonants were dropped. A diacritical mark or diacritic, also called an accent mark, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... For other articles which might have the same name, see Print (disambiguation). ... In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the words pronunciation. ...

estre → être (to be)

monachal → monacal (monastic)

Many changes suggested in the fourth editions were later abandoned along with thousands of neologisms added to it. A neologism (from Greek νεολογισμός νέος [neos] = new; λόγος [logos] = word) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) — often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. ...

Very importantly too, subsequent 18th century editions of the dictionary added the letters J and V to the French alphabet in replacement of consonant I and U, fixing many cases of homography. (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... J# redirects here for technical reasons; see J Sharp. ... Look up V, v in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... U is the twenty-first letter of the modern Latin alphabet. ... A homonym is one of a group of two or more words that have the same phonetic form (i. ...

uil → vil (vile)

19th century

Many changes were introduced in the sixth edition of the Académie dictionary (1835), mainly under the influence of Voltaire. Most importantly, all OI digraphs that were represented /ɛ/ were changed to AI, thus changing the whole imperfect conjugation of all verbs. | Come and take it, slogan of the Texas Revolution 1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with an imperfective aspect. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

étois → étais (was)

The spelling of some plural words the singular form of which ended in D and T was modified to reinsert this mute consonant, so to bring the plural in morphological alignment with the singular. Only gent, 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.

parens → parents (relatives)

20th century

With important dictionaries published at the turn of 20th century, such as Émile Littré's, Pierre Larousse's and Arsène Darmesteter's, and later Paul Robert's, the Académie gradually lost much of its prestige. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... Émile Maximilien Paul Littré (February 1, 1801 - June 2, 1881) was a French lexicographer and philosopher. ... Pierre Athanase Larousse (October 23, 1817-January 3, 1875) was a French grammarian and lexicographer born in Toucy. ... Arsène Darmesteter (1846-1888), was a distinguished philologist and man of letters. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

Hence, new reforms suggested in 1901, 1935, and 1975 were almost totally ignored, except for the replacement of apostrophes with hyphens is some cases of (potential) elision in 1935. 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... An apostrophe An apostrophe (French, from the Greek αποστροφος προσωδια, the accent of elision) ( ’ ) is a punctuation and sometimes diacritic mark in languages written in the Latin alphabet. ... A hyphen ( -, or ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. ... In music, see elision (music). ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

grand'mère → grand-mère (grandmother)

Since the 1970s, though, the urge for a modernisation of the French less and less phonological orthography kept growing. In 1989, French prime minister Michel Rocard appointed the Council of French Language to simplify orthography by regularising it. The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ... Modernization is closely linked to classical liberalism. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Categories: French government | France-related stubs | Prime ministers of France ... Michel Rocard, French politician Michel Rocard (born August 23, 1930) is a French Socialist politician, former French Prime minister, and currently a member of the European Parliament. ...

The rectifications of 1990

The Council, with the help of some Académie members and observers from Francophone states, published what it called the "orthographic rectifications" on 6 December 1990.[1] La Francophonie (formally lOrganisation internationale de la Francophonie), a French language term coined in 1880 by French geographer Onésime Reclus, brother of Elisée Reclus, to designate the community of people and countries using French, is an international organisation of and governments. ... December 6 is the 340th day (341st on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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 French morphology was also affected. For other uses, see Morphology. ...

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 of many compound nouns are fused together if a) one element is a verb, b) the individual sense of the elements has changed, or c) onomatopoeias: A compound is a word composed of more than one free morphemes. ... For the supervillain, see Onomatopoeia (comics). ...

porte-monnaie → portemonnaie (wallet)

sage-femme → sagefemme (midwife)

coin coin → coincoin (quack)

Loan compounds are also fused together: A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ...

hot-dog → hotdog (hot-dog)

Number

Compound nouns joined with hyphens (or fused) make their plural using normal rules, that is adding a final s or x, unless the modifier is an adjective (in which case both elements must agree), or the head is a determined noun, or a proper noun: Look up Plural in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ... Determiners are words which quantify or identify nouns. ... In English, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ...

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

Loanwords also have a regular plural:

lieder → lieds (lieder)

Tréma

The tréma (known as diaeresis in English) indicating exceptionally that gu is not a digraph is to be placed on the u instead of on the following vowel. Also, such trémas are added to words where they were not previously used: In linguistics, a, diaeresis, or dieresis (AE) (from Greek (diaerein), to divide) is the modification of a syllable by distinctly pronouncing one of its vowels. ...

aiguë → aigüe (fem. acute)

arguer → argüer (to argue)

Accents

Verbs with their infinitive in éCer (where C can be any consonant) change their é to è in the future and conditional: In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... The acute accent (  ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... The conditional tense (sometimes described as the conditional mood) is a verb form in many languages, in which a verb root is modified to form verb tenses, moods, or aspects expressing degrees of certainty or uncertainty and hypothesis about past, present, or future. ...

je céderai → je cèderai (I shall give up)

Additionally, verbs ending in e placed before an inverted Subject "je" change their e to è instead of é: Word order, in linguistic typology, refers to the order in which words appear in sentences across different languages. ... The subject of a sentence is one of the two main parts of a sentence, the other being the predicate. ...

cédé-je ? → cédè-je ? (am I giving up?)

Circumflex accents are removed on i and u if they are not needed to distinguish between homographs. They are retained in the simple past and subjunctive of verbs, : The circumflex ( ˆ ) (often called a caret, a hat or an uppen) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek, French, Dutch, Esperanto, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Vietnamese, Japanese romaji, Welsh, Portuguese, Italian, Afrikaans and other languages, and formerly in Turkish [citation needed]. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus (bent... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ... In grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a verb mood that exists in many languages. ...

mû → mu (driven)

but qu'il mût unchanged (he must have driven), and

dû (the past participle of the very common irregular verb devoir, or the noun created from this participle) is kept to make the distinction with du (the required contraction of de le, which means some when used as an undetermined masculine article, or means of the when used as an adverb).

Wherever accents are missing or wrong because of past error/omission or change of pronunciation, they are added or changed:

receler → recéler (to receive – stolen goods)

événement → évènement (event)

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

diesel → diésel (diesel)

Schwa changing into open e

In verbs with an infinitive in -eler or -eter, the opening of the schwa can currently be noted either by changing the e to è or by doubling the following l or t, depending on verbs. Only the first rule shall now be used except in appeler, jeter, and their derivatives (which continue to use ll and tt). In phonetics, vowel height refers to the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth in a vowel sound. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... In linguistics, derivation is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes, for example, by adding a derivational affix. ...

j'étiquette → j'étiquète (I label)

This applies also when those verbs are nominalized using the suffix -ement: Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science. ...

amoncellement → amoncèlement (pile)

Past participle agreement

Notwithstanding the normal rules (see French verbs), the past participle laissé followed by an infinitive never agrees with the object: French verbs are a complex area of French grammar, with a conjugation scheme that allows for three finite moods (with anywhere from one to five synthetic tenses), three non-finite moods, three voices, and two aspects. ... In linguistics, a participle is a kind of verbal adjective; it indicates that the noun it modifies is a participant in the action that the participle refers to. ... In linguistics, a theta role or θ-role is the semantic role a noun phrase plays in a sentence. ...

je les ai laissés partir → je les ai laissé partir (I 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 participle fait already 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 uniformised 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 different morphemes altogether: In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

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 (drink))

Look up punch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Application

These "rectifications" were supposed to be applied beginning in 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, or Josette Rey-Debove's accepting a few (that have been added, as alternative spellings, to Le Robert), they appear to have become dead letters. 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Dictionnaires Le Robert is a French publisher of dictionaries founded by Paul Robert. ...

As of 2004 though an international institutional effort to revive them arose. Notably, a French-Belgian-Swiss association has been set up to promote reform. In July of the same year, Microsoft announced that the French version of their applications would soon comply to the new spelling rules. On 23 March 2005 a version of Encarta was published using the new spelling, and on 14 April an update of Microsoft Office was offered. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Microsoft is one of few companies engaging itself in the console wars Where they are up against sony, nintendo, and of course sharps new console which may cause a threat. ... March 23 is the 82nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (83rd in leap years). ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Encarta is a digital multimedia encyclopedia published and updated frequently by Microsoft Corporation. ... April 14 is the 104th day of the year (105 in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 261 days remaining. ... Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs created or purchased by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows, and Apple Computers Mac OS and Mac OS X operating systems. ...

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. // The French people (French: les Français), etymologically derives from the word Franks (which means free), a Germanic tribe which overran Gaul at the end of the Roman empire. ...

In Quebec, the French Language Commission, that was reluctant at first to apply what it prefers naming the "modernisation", because of the opposition it received in France, announced that they were now applying its rules to new borrowings and neologisms. Motto: Je me souviens (French: I remember) Official languages French Flower Blue Flag Iris (Iris versicolor Linné) Tree Yellow Birch Bird Snowy Owl Capital Quebec City Largest city Montreal Lieutenant-Governor Lise Thibault Premier Jean Charest (PLQ) Parliamentary representation  - House seats  - Senate seats 75 24 Area Total  - Land  - Water  (% of... The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) (Quebec Office of the French language) was established on March 24, 1961 along with the Quebec ministry of Cultural affairs. ...

It should be noted that more and more publications are modernizing spelling. Le Forum, from the Université de Montréal as well as Les Éditions Perce-Neige have recently adopted the new spelling.

See also

• French orthography
• Use of the circumflex in French

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The circumflex (^) is one of the five diacritics used in the French language. ...

External link

• http://www.orthographe-recommandee.info/ (in French)