Alain Rey
Posted on 10/10/2008 5:10:21 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Schoolchildren are celebrating, commentators are astonished and purists are fuming over what they describe as a scandalous attack on 500 years of French history.
In the most sweeping linguistic reform in France for centuries, Le Petit Robert, the nation's premier dictionary, has cast aside tradition to allow alternative spellings for thousands of words. Accents have become optional, consonants can be doubled on a whim and hyphens will float in and out of literary texts under the changes imposed by Alain Rey, the linguist responsible for the opus.
Alain Rey
He says that the reform has been necessary to enable a rigidly codified language to move forward in a society of slang and multi-ethnic innovation. “We have to make spelling simpler,” he said. “It's too complicated and it's not surprising that schoolchildren have trouble learning it.”
In an attempt to ease their task in schools that continue to impose weekly dictations, he has included variable spellings for 6,000 of the 60,000 words in his dictionary, including many of foreign, and notably English, origin. Cameraman, for instance, can be written with or without an acute accent over the “e” in Le Petit Robert 2009, published this month. Manager can be spelt manageur and acupuncture can be turned into acuponcture.
Mr Rey says that reform was long overdue, since the last great linguistic clean-up in 1762, when medieval spellings were prodded into what became modern French. He points out that the changes have been authorised by l'Académie Française, the body that regulates the language, and that the concept of twin spellings is nothing new. The French word for key, for example, has been written two different ways for years, he says - clé or clef.
However, the initiative has sparked a furious row in a country that has clung
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
Apparently, they haven’t read about the Tower of Bebel.
This is it... The decline of the French nation is upon us. It’s all downhill from here. Pretty soon they will be eating Muenster instead of brie and drinking beer instead of wine.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Bitter clingers.
oui, oui!
Why dont we just forget vowels altogether...I mean ....who needs em! ;)
W hv t mk spllng smplr
Harlez-vous francais?
(Can you drive a French motorcycle?)
yitbos
They’ll all be speaking Arabic soon enough. Why defend the language when you won’t defend the culture. Or, at least, what is left of the culture after being savaged by socialism.
Kinda good to know that “dumbing down” isn’t a uniquely American concept.
"This is my Universal Translator. It could have been my greatest invention, but it translates everything into an incomprehensible dead language"
"Hello!"
"Bonjour!"
quid pro quo...You gave us Socialisme...We give you American-English..After November we’ll both have much more of the ‘gifts’ and we’ll see who is happiest...
Bonjours Monsewers
Bush’s fault.
HBRW
By Jessica Shaver
Th lphbt s hrd t mstr;
Rdng bck t frnt’s dsstr.
Nlss h’s rd th clssfds,
whr trth, bbrvtd, hds,
th wld-b rdr f th Bbl,
prsntd wth th txt, s lbl
t trn nd rn wth shrks nd hwls-
th Hbrw Scrptrs hv n vwls!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Ce dommage pour imbeciles avec des fromage a la tete, ils ressemblent a la grenouille verte dans le casserole ebullition, ils’avait besoin des troupeau elephants dans L’Academie Francaise maintenant.
Le conservateur a dit Sarkozy France changements nécessaires. Il a commencé avec les écoles il ya six mois.
yitbos
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