My perspective - Accentuating the issue
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- Published on Friday, February 12, 2016
By Kate Jackman-Atkinson
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
There’s been a firestorm of controversy in France over the last week. It wasn’t about immigration or refugees, it wasn’t about the economy or unemployment, it wasn’t even about terrorism or radicalization. It was about spelling.
In 1990, l’Academie Francaise, the official moderator of the French language, proposed optional changes to the language to make it simpler to learn. The changes will apply to about 2,400 words and include the deletion of the accent circumflex (^) and the hyphen in some words, as well as the removal of some silent letters. The new spellings are optional; dictionaries are advised to carry both the old and the new spellings and teachers are to mark both correct.
The proposed changes were met with little opposition in 1990, when they were unanimously accepted by members of l’Academie. In 2008, few people took notice when the education ministry recommended that the new spelling rules be used. Last November, the spelling changes were again mentioned in an education ministry document stating that the changes should be adopted. Then, last Wednesday, the French television channel TF1 reported that publishers have decided to add the changes to textbooks for the upcoming school year and the internet exploded.
The reforms gave rise to a couple of hashtags, #JeSuisCircumflexe (modelled on #JeSuisCharlie) and #ReformeOrthographe (orthographic reform), that were trending on Twitter in France on Thursday. Most of the anger centred around the perception that the changes were dumbing down the language.
Front National, a far-right party, vice president Florian Philippot declared, “the French language is our soul” and the mayor of Nice, centre right Christian Estrosi, called the reforms “absurd”.
Looking through the list of changes, they really do seem like more of an update than an upheaval. The circumflex will continue to be used on the letters “a”, “o” and “e”, but will, in most cases, be dropped from “i” and “u” when the accent doesn’t change the meaning or pronunciation of the word. Some changes include: Oignont to Ognon (onion); Nénuphar to Nénufar (water lily); S’entraîner to S'entrainer (to practise); Maîtresse to Maitresse (mistress, teacher); Coût to Cout (cost); Mille-pattes to Millepattes (centipedes); Porte-monnaie to Portemonnaie (purse, wallet) and week-end to weekend (weekend).
In an electronic age, removing some unnecessary accents seems to make a lot of sense. But the problem is that spelling and language aren’t just some letters on a page, there is so much more wrapped up in each character.
Pierre Favre, a school headmaster and president of the National Schools Union, summed it up, saying, “What makes this subject so controversial is that people are passionate about it. To change spelling touches on their childhood, reminds them of the pain, the effort, the successes needed to learn the rules and triumph. The circumflex accents are a kind of trophy.” Given the quirks of our language, this is something to which we can all relate.
At the centre of the debate really is a question of “what is language”? Is it ever static? Can it be? No matter how much the purists would like to hold on to the past, more than any other aspect of our lives, language is an ever changing reflection of the people who speak it. It’s something that we use every day– it’s not fine china that we bring out just for special occasions– and it has to work for that, its primary purpose.
I agree with those upset over the changes, but in the same way that we no longer speak old English and each year, new words are added to our dictionaries, language must adapt. In the same way that there are dialects, language must evolve to work for the people who use it. For those who prefer the classics, they can still use the circumflex and hyphen to their hearts’ content.
