Reforms of French orthography

French writing has gone through many changes over the years. Even when the rules were first set down a long time ago, people still argued about the best way to write French words. Some wanted to stick to old ways that showed where words came from, while others wanted to change the writing to match how words actually sounded.

One early dictionary maker, César-Pierre Richelet, chose the newer way of writing in 1680, but the famous Académie française decided to keep the older, traditional rules when they published their first dictionary in 1694.

Later on, more ideas for making French writing simpler came up. The biggest of these changes happened on December 6, 1990, when some rules were adjusted to make them easier. Even today, there are ideas for bigger changes, but most people haven't shown much interest in them yet.

16th century

Before the 1500s, the way people spelled and punctuated words in French was very messy. But when printing was invented around 1470, everyone needed a more uniform way to write.

During this time, some smart people, called Renaissance humanists, worked with book publishers to suggest changes to French spelling. One famous person, Jacques Peletier du Mans, created a new way to spell words based on how they sounded and even used new printing symbols in 1550. He kept using his special spelling in all his books, but others did not follow his ideas.

18th century

The third and fourth editions of the Académie dictionary in the 1700s made big changes to French spelling. They added accents, which printers had used for a long time, and dropped many quiet sounds at the end of words.

For example, the word "estre" became "être" (to be), and "monachal" became "monacal" (monastic). Some changes from the fourth edition were later dropped, along with many new words added at the time.

Later editions in the 18th century also added the letters J and V to the French alphabet, replacing I and U. This helped avoid confusion between words that looked the same, like changing "uil" to "vil" (vile).

19th century

In the sixth edition of the Académie dictionary from 1835, many spelling changes were made, especially due to the influence of Voltaire. One big change was turning all oi spellings that made the /ɛ/ sound into ai. This changed how we spell the past tense of many verbs, like changing étois to étais (was).

Some words that end in D or T when they are alone were changed so their plural forms would match better. For example, parens became parents. The word gens kept its old spelling because people felt its singular and plural forms had different meanings.

In 1868, Ambroise Firmin-Didot proposed a new idea in his book about French spelling. He thought adding a special mark under the letter "t" in some words could help make French spelling easier. For instance, in words ending with -tion like diplomatie, the "t" isn’t always pronounced the same way. He suggested using a new symbol ţ to show this clearly.

20th century

With important dictionaries published at the turn of the 20th century, such as those of Émile Littré, Pierre Larousse, Arsène Darmesteter, and later Paul Robert, the Académie gradually lost much of its prestige.

Hence, new reforms suggested in 1901, 1935, and 1975 were almost totally ignored, except for the replacement of apostrophes with hyphens in some cases of (potential) elision in 1935.

Since the 1970s, though, calls for the modernisation of French orthography have grown stronger. In 1989, French prime minister Michel Rocard appointed the Superior Council of the French language to simplify French orthography by regularising it.

Rectifications of 1990

The council, with the help of some Académie members and observers from Francophone states, published reforms that it called "rectifications orthographiques" on 6 December 1990.

Those "rectifications", instead of changing individual spellings, published general rules or lists of modified words. In total, around 2000 words have seen their spelling changed, and French morphology was also affected.

Hyphens

Numerals are joined with hyphens:

sept cent mille trois cent vingt et un → sept-cent-mille-trois-cent-vingt-et-un (700,321).

Elements of compound nouns are fused together:

• if one element is a verb: porte-monnaie → portemonnaie (wallet)
• in bahuvrihi compounds (where the individual sense of the elements has changed): sage-femme → sagefemme (midwife)
• in onomatopoeias: coin coin → coin-coin (quack).

Loan compounds are also fused together:

hot-dog → hotdog (hot dog).

week-end → weekend, aligning the word with its modern English spelling.

Number

Compound nouns joined with hyphens (or fused) make their plural using normal rules, that is adding a final s or x, unless the modifier is an adjective (in which case both elements must agree), or the head is a determined noun, or a proper noun:

des pèse-lettre → des pèse-lettres (letter scales)

Loanwords also have a regular plural:

lieder → lieds (songs)

Tréma

The tréma (known as a diaeresis in English) indicating exceptionally that the u is not silent in gu + vowel combinations is to be placed on the u instead of on the following vowel. Also, trémas are added to such words where they were not previously used:

aiguë → aigüe (fem. acute)

ambiguïté → ambigüité (ambiguity)

arguer → argüer (to argue)

A tréma is also added to a u following an e muet added to soften a g, to prevent the eu combination being read as :

gageure → gageüre (wager)

Accents

Verbs with their infinitive in éCer (where C can be any consonant) change their é to è in the future and conditional:

je céderai → je cèderai (I shall give up)

Additionally, verbs ending in e placed before an inverted subject "je" change their e to è instead of é:

aimé-je ? → aimè-je ? (do I like?)

Circumflex accents are removed on i and u if they are not needed to distinguish between homographs. They are retained in the simple past and subjunctive of verbs:

mû → mu (driven), but qu'il mût unchanged (he must have driven), and

dû (the past participle of the very common irregular verb devoir, or the noun created from this participle) is kept to make the distinction with du (the required contraction of de + le, which means some when used as an undetermined masculine article, or means of the when used as a preposition).

Wherever accents are missing or wrong because of past errors or omissions or a change of pronunciation, they are added or changed:

receler → recéler (to receive – stolen goods)

événement → évènement (event)

Accents are also added to loanwords where dictated by French pronunciation:

diesel → diésel (diesel)

Schwa changing into open e

In verbs with an infinitive in -eler or -eter, the opening of the schwa (/ə/ → /ɛ/) could previously be noted either by changing the e to è or by doubling the following l or t, depending on the verb in question. With this reform, only the first rule shall be used except in the cases of appeler, jeter, and their derivatives (which continue to use ll and tt respectively).

j'étiquette → j'étiquète (I label)

This applies also when those verbs are nominalized using the suffix -ement:

amoncellement → amoncèlement (pile)

Past participle agreement

Notwithstanding the normal rules (see French verbs), the past participle laissé followed by an infinitive never agrees with the object:

je les ai laissés partir → je les ai laissé partir (I let them go, literally: I have let them go)

This is an alleged simplification of the rules governing the agreement as applied to a past participle followed by an infinitive. The participle fait already followed an identical rule.

Miscellaneous

Many phenomena were considered as "anomalies" and thus "corrected". Some "families" of words from the same root showing inconsistent spellings were uniformized on the model of the most usual word in the "family".

imbécillité → imbécilité (idiocy)

This rule was also extended to suffixes in two cases, actually changing them into totally different morphemes altogether:

cuissot → cuisseau (haunch)

levraut → levreau (leveret)

Isolated words were adjusted to follow older reform where they had been omitted:

douceâtre → douçâtre (sickly sweet)

oignon → ognon (onion)

Lastly, some words have simply seen their spelling simplified, or fixed when it was uncertain:

pagaïe/pagaille/pagaye → pagaille (mess)

punch → ponch (punch)

Application

These "rectifications" were supposed to be applied as of 1991 but, following a period of agitation and the publication of many books such as the Union of copy editors' attacking new rules one by one, André Goosse's defending them, or Josette Rey-Debove's accepting a few (that have been added, as alternative spellings, to Le Robert), they appeared to become, for a while, dead proposals.

21st century

In 2004, many groups worked together to bring back spelling changes made in 1990. Big companies like Microsoft started using these new spelling rules in their French programs. By 2005, books and software began using the new ways to spell words.

In Quebec, experts decided to use these new rules for new words. More books and websites started using the updated spelling. By 2009, big publishers in Belgium also began using the new rules.

In 2016, some people got very upset when they heard that schools might change the spelling rules. Many people talked about it on Twitter, but the government said that the old ways of spelling would still be okay. Some people even wanted to make French much simpler by taking away special marks and capital letters.