h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Academie Francaise has recommended a number of changes to the spellings of French words, which will now be officially adopted.

Many of these changes include removing the circumflex (^), or as many of my acquaintances call it, the 'pointy hat'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35496893

Is this the best way to modernise the language?


This sort of thing wouldn't happen in English - if enough people choose to use a particular word or spelling, it finds its way into the dictionaries. This is why the OED is so big.

That article says that the circumflex changes the pronunciation, but as far as I know it doesn't. It has two purposes:

- to distinguish in spelling between words which are pronounced identically but have different meanings such as du (of the) and dû (must)

- to show that a word originally had an s in the past (hôtel was originally hostel).

Maybe you make to pronounce the 'S', but pull out at the last minute


Do they systematically modernise the Irish language in this way?

Yes. They did a complete re-jig of the spelling of Irish in the 1960s. They removed a lot of the letters which were silent, and got rid of a lot of the historical left-overs from previous spellings.

For example, Úbhall meaning apple was changed to Úll. The bh was not pronounced, but it is possible to see a connection between Apple and Úbhall (b and p are almost the same sound) while the connection between Apple and Úl is not as obvious.

My surname was simplified from Mac Amhalghaidh to Mac Amhlaidh, both pronounced the same.

This is why Irish looks a lot simpler than Scots Gaelic - there was never any spelling reform in Scots Gaelic.

Reminds me of a time years ago when I had to give a best man's speech at a Dublin wedding reception, and read out the telegrams. I'd never seen so many g's and h's in the same words. I was making a right fool of myself. The bride kept elbowing me and saying things like 'It's Patrick O' Hoolihan, you eejit".

A while ago, I read that the Chinese are trying to simplify their written language. I wish them good luck.

Mainland China revised their traditional character system. The Simplified Chinese system is still horrendous, but the symbols are a bit easier to read than the Traditional ones which are still used in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a special place. I've heard that same of their citizens can segue from Mandarin to English to Cantonese in the same sentence.

So, speaking personally, can some non-citizen expats.
I found Shanghainese easier that either Mandarin or Canronese, but it is less useful.

I have no doubt that there are some very smart people in China, that they can handle the challenges of multiple difficult languages.

We have been through all this with German. It is still controversial, and to most people totally incomprehensible. Not quite sure why they felt the need to have a spelling reform at all. People make mistakes since just as they did before.

And as from 2006, only the new rules are deemed "correct".

But as to the French: I think Gnomon is right and the circumflex didn't change the pronunciation - and I speak as someone who makes the difference between é/è and ai/ais, as we had it drummed into us at school. (Although after a mumbling session, I have come to the conclusion that there may be a tiny difference between, say, "crête" and "cretin")

If languages are really trying to move forward into the 21st century, they ought to look to leaving out the characters which are not to be found on foreign keyboards (Scandinavians, I'm looking at you!)

My thoughts on this:

In German, there are the Umlauts, which can easily be changed to ae, oe and ue instead of ä, ö and ü. This is an accepted adaptation and is used in crosswords and also necessary if you're typing on an anglo-Saxon keyboard. ß can be written as ss - no one will know.

Other languages, such as French, and probably many others (including those Scandinavians) would, unfortunately, lose out, as words can change their meanings (see "du" and "dû" as Gnomon says, or "ou" and "où".)

So, as desirable as it might seem to do away with ALL special characters, it would be a damn shame and all those foreign languages and their speakers, writers and boffins would be in uproar.

Technology is, fortunately, catching up with the problems. I have heard that you can now have URLs in Arabic and Cyrillic letterings. Or if not, it's in the pipeline.

As for the French changing only 2000 spellings. what's the point? They should concentrate on teaching French schoolchildren to write properly first, whichever system they are using. Some of the e-mails we get would make your toenails curl up, catch fire and fall off - they are written with no regard to orthography or grammar and can only be deciphered if read aloud.

Examples can be quoted, but not till Monday when I'm back in the office.

Du without the pointy hat will mean whatever the surrounding sentence indicates. "J'aurais du apprendre mes lecons" will only have one way to make sense. [Assuming that I haven't screwed up after forty years of getting rusty with my French grammar ]

Fashionably late, me.

*takes off beret*
*puts baguette and wine bottle on the table*


That reform took place in 1990. But noone really paid attention to it, although some class books did put it in practise.

Some argue that it's the first step towards making text speak our official language.
I wouldn't be so radical, but I don't think lowering expectations because "people don't get how it works anyway" is a good thing.


Now, we're not binning the pointy hat altogether (don't worry witches!)
First of all, the reform doesn't impose the change, it merely says that both spellings are correct.
So I guess the simpler form may or may not take the upper hand... Only time will tell.
The reform is optional, so teachers don't even have to teach the revised spellings (but they can't penalize a pupil who uses it instead of the traditional one).

Also, if there is a risk that the drop of the hat changes the meaning of the word, the hat stays.
And if the hat belongs to a proper noun (Jérôme, Benoît, Angoulême, ...), it stays.


Gnomon is right in that the pointy hat can be used to distinguish between words that sound the same but have a different meaning :
So it's not really absolutely necessary in most of those instances, because, as Paulh said, context helps identify which word we're dealing with.

It is also true that it sometimes indicates a lost "s", as in hôtel, tête, château.
Again, I would say it looks weird without the hat (especially "tête" ), but leaving it out wouldn't produce much confusion.

There are also (a very few) instances where it is used to indicate that a letter is to be pronounced :
"une piqure" (an injection), written like that would mean that you pronounce it "pikr", whereas it is pronounced "pikur", so by writing it "piqûre", you get rid of the ambiguity.


And there are also instances where it does change the pronunciation.
As TC remarked, "crête" and "crétin" don't have the same vowel sound (the ê is more rounded than the é), although in this instance you might argue that it's because there's a second syllable.

But this next one has no other reason for the different pronunciation (again, the one with the circumflex is a more rounded sound) :
"J'ai beaucoup mangé, je me ferais bien un petit jeûne" means "I have eaten a lot, I'd rather like to fast a little".
"J'ai beaucoup mangé, je me ferais bien un petit jeune" means "I have eaten a lot, I'd rather like to have a young man".

I'm familiar with "petit dejeuner," b ut not "petit jeune."

And thanks for explaining.

well, petit déjeûner is when you break fast.