The circumflex: a battle over an accent mark
This whole affair is the symptom of a deeper tragedy, that of the French &quot;orthographe&quot; (meaning &quot;proper spelling&quot;).<p><i>Orthographe</i> is a rather recent notion, that appeared well after the creation of the Académie française (1635), I would say somewhere in the middle of the 18th century, and then became the universal enforceable &quot;norm&quot; that it is today, in the middle of the following century (19th).<p>Before that, you could spell French any which way you liked; most authors spelled the same word differently, not just in different works, but in the same page, and not depending on context either.<p>And it wasn&#x27;t a problem, because it can be argued that the best works of French literature were written at a time when orthographe didn&#x27;t exist.<p>There were &quot;grammarians&quot; that insisted that there should be some rules and that they should be followed, but they were objects of universal scorn and mockery.<p>Then, I&#x27;m not sure exactly how, grammarians won, and now we have orthographe.<p>Orthographe is a tragedy for two reasons:<p>- it&#x27;s mainly, or uniquely, a social marker<p>- it&#x27;s so complex and so arbitrary, it takes between 5 and 10 years of arduous study to learn.<p>And after people learn it, they become attached to it, it becomes part of their identity, and it continues to be enforced and imposed on children as a matter of course, without any objection from anybody.<p>For the record, I&#x27;m a very good (or by most metrics, excellent) French speller, but I&#x27;m also a parent and am heartbroken to see my kids spend the best part of their young lives learning this thing that has absolutely no extrinsic or intrinsic value whatsoever. They could learn music, or drawing, or cooking, or woodworking, or go play outdoors, but there&#x27;s no time, because orthographe is so damn hard it takes all of the time in school, and more time at home. Hard and useless.<p>The worst part is it&#x27;s not a fight you can fight on your own -- decide that your kids won&#x27;t learn orthographe after all -- because that would cause them a huge disservice: the social marker part means that those who can&#x27;t spell are excluded from normal society and have a very hard time finding jobs (any job).<p>Many social problems in French society -- including, I really think so, recent outbursts of &quot;terrorism&quot; -- have at least some roots in the actual terror and tragedy of orthographe. If you can&#x27;t learn orthographe you can&#x27;t be a member of French society, and in order to learn orthographe you have to already be a member of said society.<p>Do I like the current reform? No, I think it&#x27;s stupid and counter-productive, because it <i>adds</i> an alternative spelling to 2000 or so words; the alternative spelling may be simpler, but the addition raises complexity instead of lowering it. -- The point is to get rid of orthographe, not double it.