So, they’ve decided to change the language:
10 spellings that will change
Oignon becomes ognon (onion)
Nénuphar becomes nénufar (waterlily)
S’entraîner becomes s’entrainer (to train)
Maîtresse becomes maitresse (mistress or female teacher)
Coût becomes cout (cost)
Paraître becomes paraitre (to appear)
Week-end becomes weekend (weekend)
Mille-pattes becomes millepattes (centipedes)
Porte-monnaie becomes portemonnaie (wallet)
Des après-midi becomes des après-midis (afternoons)
In a normal country these are just things that happen over time. Language changes, spelling changes, and editors, dictionaries and just people in general get used to it as the years pass. It’s entirely possible to use archaic spellings (ize for example, while we think of it as American is really old English which has survived there) or the modern and it’s just a matter of usage.
France has an official body which decides these things. And that, of course, is why we don’t want to be in a socio-economic bear hug like the European Union with such people. Because we just don’t want to be in any form of union with fuckwits who believe it is any part of the State’s duty to insist upon the spelling of onion. For if we do then that traditional British ideal of very little law but what law there is being important about important things cannot survive, can it?
It’s under enough pressure as it is without being yoked to The French.
The French are kicking up fuck about this. I’ve seen “Je suis circumflex” pictures on FB.
You do know that the French themselves mostly ignore these rules, don’t you?
Who exactly believes in this ideal? I mean, in Britain? If this is a British ideal, what the fuck has the Parliament being doing for the past century and a half, because it sure as shit has not been pursuing any such ideal.
An ideal is useless if it is not practiced. It’s not even an ideal if nobody believes in it.
Because we just don’t want to be in any form of union with fuckwits who believe it is any part of the State’s duty to insist upon the spelling of onion.
And yet we live in a country that has banned “Chairman” and is working on “manhole”. The f*ckwits are inside already.
I am all for the French insisting on their circumflex. And don’t even get me started on Germany’s Rechtschreibreform. I shall go to the barricades for the ß!
How do we spell weekend or week end or week-end?
And what a cheek to dictate the orthography.
Besides, every one (everyone?) knows that “Have a good weekend” is “bon week”.
The “little law” rule of thumb was trashed comprehensively by NuLabour which, as well as other bouts of legislative diarrhea, created more criminal offenses in 13 years than were created during the whole of the Nineteenth Century.
My position is that the French are behind in everything because most of their education (and brain-space) is given over to mastering the vagaries of their ‘orthographe’.
Bloody waste of time if you ask me.
As Chester Draws says, the Academie Francaise are basically pissing in the wind. It’s one of those odd, outdated curiosities, like giving sky-fairy worshippers seats in the House of Lords.
There’s probably a few votes in keeping them there, like if you got rid of them, some French people would think the country was going to hell.
And yet we live in a country that has banned “Chairman” and is working on “manhole”. The f*ckwits are inside already.
The leading French fuckwits constitute an official committee. Our fuckwits aren’t centrally coordinated. Be grateful for small mercies.
Theophrastus – “The leading French fuckwits constitute an official committee. Our fuckwits aren’t centrally coordinated. Be grateful for small mercies.”
I don’t know if Britain has one, but most English speaking countries have an official body whose job it is to purge the maps of racially insensitive names. America and Canada both have one. I think Australia and New Zealand both do too.
When the OED gets criticised for including words like “house wife” and people like Dave are too weak to stand up to the loons, I don’t think it matters.
I sure won’t change the way I write, especially nenuphar which just looks like a “textspeak” modification.
They cannot get most kids to spell properly as it is, not sure why they think this will make any difference or is of any value.
Also, this has been agreed by in 1996 I believe and will only reach the school books this year. Which is why its kicking a fuss now. The latter is probably due to a general ras-le -bol of the continuous attacks on French culture and civilisation.
The academie francaise is like the royal society, so not much different from what you have here.
Don’t the French like lots of rules so that they can ignore them?
bof
j’en ai ras-le-bol is a perennial favourite of mine.
It just sounds right.
And yet we live in a country that has banned “Chairman” and is working on “manhole”
That won’t go down well with teh gheys.
What’s next, “cockpit”?
When the OED gets criticised for including words like “house wife”…
The femiloons can criticise the OED as much as they like: free speech is their right. But their shrill prescriptions won’t change the OED’s descriptive account of how language is actually (and was) used. So you can relax a little.
French friends tell me their kids aren’t using accents because they’re a PIA to enter while txting (predictive text may solve this problem).
Weekend? The French are allowing English words? The culture is dead!
In some lines of work, accents and all that jazz are a huge irritant. IT has replaced the Acadamie as the authority here.
It’s handy that the world’s global language has none of that guff, and we’ll all speak English one day.
The question is whether it will be re-named for spurious PC reasons (see GMT / UTC).
“The academie francaise is like the royal society”: what, a conspiracy to loot the taxpayer and tell lies about Global Warming?
It’s good to see our nefarious plan is working. You Europeans had us scared for a while when you brought out the €. It’s good to know that our efforts to eliminate pesky things like accent marks are working in general. The job isn’t done but us Yanks will win the battle. Our prize, the right to not have to use obscure(to us) keyboard layouts.
the most silly one was the changing of the rules on the sharfes-S in German. Which required changing the spelling of one of the most commonly-used words in the language to “dass”.
If you’ve got to change for change’s sakes, then the swiss got it right – they just got rid of the bugger.
Italian and French should be heard, but not seen.
There is no need for German or Dutch.
Dutch is great*, but they lost a lot of credos in my eyes when they decided to align Dutch with the bulk of the new German spelling rules. Just to prove once more that Dutch is in fact just a dialect of German recognised as a distinct language…..
*one thing I do sorely miss about Holland is the language. It’s really very colourful and flexible in a way that German is not. Plus, it has extremely creative expletives that are not even matched in English, the Language of God Himself.
abacab,
Speaking Dutch clearly causes pain to the speaker, and sounds disgusting.
Dutch-English, on the other hand, sounds great.
If they have some great words, then they can be transferred over.
We need a new “fuck”.
Steve
In this household, the manhole is a stopcock.
(OK, I am going…)
“France has an official body which decides these things.”
Except nobody In France takes any notice of it.
The one which offends my sensitivities the most is Nénuphar. You’d have thought that it was sufficiently out of the way to be used by people capable of spelling it and if you’re singling out the -ph- form why on earth start with the wretched water-lily?
Of course spelling and etymology are intimately related and the circumflex used to signify a lengthening of the vowel sound in the spoken language and more often than not indicated where a letter -s- had been dropped which is still retained in English.
Maîtresse and Coût in the list are examples of this but there are countless others like Forêt and Hôpital.
Of course there’s an argument for aligning the rules with popular usage but the price for this is sweeping away a bit of cultural history.
Sorry to expatiate – I just read DBC Reed’s comment on another thread and I’m using this as therapy.
Pauv’e mec!
@jackC, must disagree with you. Once you understand it and are used to the sounds, Dutch has got an incredible selection of dipthong sounds that have no equivalent in English.
Jack C, from my cold, dead hands! Watching people try to speak Dutch is one of the few true joys in life.
John B
Except nobody In France takes any notice of it.
Except my French friends who tend to go ape over linguistic matters. The more French declines as a global language, the more strident they become about the details. Put crudely, frogsters still cannot quite accept that the anglo-saxons triumphed globally.
Essentially the circumflex in these words has become optional. If you want to continue to use it, you may.
Also I find it bemusing that, of the 2 words for water lily, nénuphar is changed but nymphéa remains the same.
For the French “good” French is a class marker. It makes you a bien-pensant. That it makes no sense is irrelevant (indeed a bonus). Hence quatre-vingts-dix not the much easier nonante.
But they’ll write le weekend and l’email just like the rest.
abacab,
I’m sure you’re right, but how do the Dutch feel?
A decent compromise would be to record some Dutch “noises” for niche enthusiasts like yourself, then phase it out.
Abacab: “Dutch is great*, but they lost a lot of credos in my eyes when they decided to align Dutch with the bulk of the new German spelling rules. ”
You mean when a couple of Linguists with an overblown sense of self-importance decided to do away with sensible and easy-to-remember rules of spelling and grammar, and substitute them with semi-mathematical crap?
Hyeah… Like anyone but the most anal-retentive modernists use *those* .. Most of us cloggies use the 1965 rulebook that got rid of the 19thC ( and older) crap.
I also make the occasional point by making pancakes using two pans if people *insist* I have to Follow the Official Rules.. 😉
And what JackR sez… Watching people try to pronounce “Amsterdam heeft achtentachtig prachtige grachten.” is dead fun.
Or reading little red ridinghood to kids and convincing the foreigners we’re actually teaching them the ways of our Lord and Dominator, C’Tulhu… *innocent*
Nothing comes close to the retardedness of Katharevousa vs Demotic Greek.
Also I find it bemusing that, of the 2 words for water lily, nénuphar is changed but nymphéa remains the same.
I also wondered about nénuphar so looked it up, turns out (who researches these things?) that its not from greek but from persian via latin via arabic so the ‘ph’ is questionable.
Yes, you guessed it, nymphéa is from greek so the ‘ph’ is understandable.
If they must rationalise, then they got that right at least.
The spanish govt also concerns itself with correct spelling, and the spanish people are keen and proud to tell you that ‘so as it is spelled, so is it spoken’ which is handy and sensible. However, they have done a grievous thing in changing ‘ph’ to ‘f’ – farmacia (pharmacy),
fotografía (photograph) etc.
I hold this against them as cultural vandalism for which someone should punish them.
Spelling should remain faithful to its root where possible, even when rationalising irrationalities.
“changing ‘ph’ to ‘f’ – farmacia (pharmacy)”
The Cypriots did this year’s ago, in the name of reclaiming their birthright or some such tosh (Paphos became Pafos, etc).
It was all ahistorical bollocks (as Mr Bonk points out, “ph” is not non-Greek), but was a massive pork opportunity.
Their first step on the road from being backward, but oddly modern and efficient, to being a proper First World basket case.
@Grikath,
Indeed. And because you lot, like us Brits, are not taught your own language seriously rigorously, most of my Dutch friends totally ignored the recent “reform” of qusai-mathematical nonsense, as you put it, and just kept spelling stuff the way they always had. None of this “if it’s an animal combined with a plant it has a silent “n” in the middle” or whatever bizarre bullsh1t was though up to justify incorporating some academic linguist’s pet peeve into Het Groene Boekje.