French orthography
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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spellings of many words are derived from Latin etymologies, which has resulted in a multitude of silent letters. Nevertheless, there are rules governing French orthography which allow for a reasonable degree of accuracy when producing French words from their written forms.
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[edit] History of French orthography
The oldest known French text, the Oaths of Strasbourg, dates back to 842.
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[edit] Alphabet
French is written using the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and five diacritics or accents. See French alphabet for details.
[edit] Diacritics
French makes use of five diacritics that can modify certain letters. Unlike in some languages, letters with diacritics are not considered to be separate letters; for example, the diacritics are ignored when alphabetizing a list of words. Further, the diacritics are often omitted from capital letters (with É being written as E, and so on), though strictly speaking, this is not considered correct, as it is merely a remnant of non-computerized printing that could not accommodate accented capital letters.
There are no letters that always require a diacritic to produce a given sound; rather, where a given letter has multiple possible sounds, a diacritic indicates that the sound that might be expected from the context is not the one that is used.
The acute accent (l'accent aigu) "´" is used only on the letter e. It normally indicates that the vowel is pronounced [e], as in épaule (shoulder) and détail (detail), when it might otherwise be read [ɛ] or [ə]. In certain closed syllables, however, é is written while the pronunciation in most dialects is [ɛ], as in céderai (I will give up) and réglementaire (regulatory); the 1990 spelling reform (see below) declared that in these cases, è should be used instead, but this spelling reform was not widely adopted.
The grave accent (l'accent grave) "`" is used on the letter e to indicate that it is pronounced [ɛ], as in manière (way) and après (after), when it is followed by a single consonant. It is also used on the letters a and u to distinguish certain homophones, such as ou (or) and où (where), and la (the) and là (there).
The cedilla (la cédille) "¸" is used only on the letter c, and only when the c is followed by a, o, or u (possibly with a diacritic); it indicates that the c is pronounced [s] (its "soft" pronunciation, that it ordinarily has only before e and i) rather than [k] (its "hard" pronunciation, that it ordinarily has elsewhere).
The circumflex (l'accent circonflexe) "^" can be used on any of the letters a, e, i, o, and u. It does not affect the pronunciation of i or u (except to lengthen them in dialects that retain the distinction between long and short vowels), and does not affect the pronunciation of a in most dialects (though in some, it changes [a] to [ɑ]). On o, it changes [ɔ] to [o], and on e, it produces [ɛ] (duplicating the function of the grave accent). The circumflex is chiefly a historical accent; it was added in the 19th century to certain words with an unpronounced s (e.g. forest → forêt) or another unpronounced letter (e.g. aage → âge).
The diaeresis (le tréma) shows that two vowels are pronounced separately (i.e., that the vowel pair is not a digraph) For example, Noël, naïf, and compare the forms of the verb haïr [aiʁ] (je hais [ɛ], nous haïssons [aisɔ̃]). It is normally written on the second vowel. It is also added above the feminine adjectival ending -e when the masculine form ends in -gu: aigu, ambigu → aiguë, ambiguë. The same practice is not followed, however, for verbs whose stem ends in -gu. For example, the verb arguer has exactly the same forms as targuer (without the inital t-), even though the two verbs are pronounced very differently ([aʁgɥe] vs. [taʁge], j'argue [ʒaʁgy] vs. je targue [ʒətaʁg]).
[edit] Words from Greek
The spelling of French words of Greek origin is complicated by a number of digraphs which originated in the Latin transcriptions. The digraphs <ph>, <th>, and <ch> are normally pronounced /f/, /t/, and /k/ in Greek loanwords, respectively; and the digraphs <ae> and <oe> are generally pronounced in Greek loanwords as though they were <e>. Further, many words in the international scientific vocabulary were constructed in French from Greek roots and have kept their digraphs (e.g., stratosphère, photographie).
[edit] French spelling reforms
[edit] Bibliography
- Fouché, Pierre (1956). Traité de prononciation française. Paris: Klincksieck.
- Tranel, Bernard (1987). The Sounds of French: An Introduction. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521315107.
