5 ms·
> it suggested to remove the circumflex from above the letters ‘i’ and ‘u’ where the accent does not change the pronunciation nor the meaning of the word, as in
by hobarrera 11y ago
> it suggested to remove the circumflex from above the letters ‘i’ and ‘u’ where the accent does not change the pronunciation nor the meaning of the word, as in ‘paraître’ (to appear) or ‘coût’ (cost).
Looks like it's a functional change. I'm a spanish speaker, and would hate to see all the accents go, because they indicate how a word must be pronounced. But we too, have cases which don't indicate anything, and I'd like to see these equally gone.
- jhanschoo 11y agoTo be fair, I don't remember that the circumflex should signify a change in pronunciation in standard French.
- elros 11y agoNowadays it's mostly only the case on the letter <e>, where it indicates a pronunciation of /ɛ/. In the past, when put on a <a> it changed it from /a/ to /ɑ/, however that mostly fell in disuse in most French French dialects and I can only hear the distinction consistently in Canadian French dialects.
- pascalmahe 11y agoThat's the thing, this specific reform only removes the accent when it doesn't have any impact. It's really about cleaning up inconstencies and weird edge cases.
- talideon 11y agoOnce upon a time, it did and in some varieties still does: its origin was in a lost /s/ (later other deleted consonants too, IIRC), which lead to compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. You can still see this in some varieties of French, such as Belgian and Swiss French, which preserve the old long vowels somewhat better than metropolitan French.