Last week I had my first Intermediate French test. It was very difficult – we were tested future and past tenses, negations, propositions, and the use of him/her/them/there/it/… (le/la/les/y/lui/leur/en). So many of the conjugations are irregular, and my vocabulary is very small. I only got 59% on the test, but I am actually quite proud that I passed it at all.
My ear is starting to really improve, I can pick out words that I recognise more easily, and now I can have a basic conversation with someone – as long as it is about kittens, food, or travel. I move onto Intermediate 2B next week, and I really need to lift my game. In order to keep up with the pace of the class, I need to learn new words every single day.
Unlike the organic English language, French language has a group of Les Immortels at the Académie française to determine the correct name and gender of all new words, and to regulate the usage of old ones. Over the years, these have been some of their rulings:
Je céderai (I will give up) will now be spelled Je cèderai
Elle considérerait (She would consider) will now be spelled Elle considèrerait
Ils interpréteront (They will interpret) will now be spelled Ils interprèteront
Crémerie (Cheese shop) will now be spelled Crèmerie
Pedigree will now be spelled Pédigrée
Revolver will now be spelled Révolver
They are even changing the spelling of August, in their war on d’accent circonflexe, and thus août will now be spelled aout. Furthermore,
bûcher (stake) will now be spelled bucher
Elle connaît (She knows) will now be spelled Elle connait
Even the beloved Île de la Cité and the Île St-Louis in Paris should properly be known as IIe de la Cité and the Ile St-Louis.
C’est la vie.
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Nooo I love the accent circonflexe!!
Here’s a little circonflexe fun fact. The circonflex often indicates places where the letter “s” has been dropped. You often still see the “s” in othe languages like English or Dutch. Of course this isn’t always the case because sometimes the workd have changed in english/dutch as well and only linguists still know the original word
In your example: Île –> Isle, but also Hôpital –> Hospital etc
There’s a council that decides about dutch spelling as well, they make such marvelous decisions like “Names of plants get an “n” in the middle unless that plant name has an animal name included in the plant name” And “Zonneschijn” (sunshine) doesn’t get a middle “n” but sterrenschijn (starshine) does, because there’s only one sun and there are many stars, however maneschijn (moonshine) doesn’t get a middle “n” either even though many moons exist but it is understood that we always talk about the earth’s moon when talking about moonshine.
Also they changed the spelling from “insekt” to “insect” for no particular reason
It’s pure madness
I can’t tell the difference between the different accents… It all sounds the same to me, although I’m sure it shouldn’t.
Nooooooo! This is a nightmare. I spent all those years learning french and now they change the writing. You got to be kidding me…