Mark J. Reed scripsit:
> Ah! I was not aware of these "old rules". I take it they were a
> feature of Romance (or whatever you choose to call the last common vulgar
> Latin) before it diverged?
Well, no. We're talking about writing here, and the Romance languages
were already pretty differentiated before anybody thought to write them
down. It's a matter of a pan-European vernacular writing convention;
I can't assign a date offhand.
> And the circumflex is a later French innovation?
It indicates a former s that is no longer written, thus e^tre for estre.
--
Dream projects long deferred John Cowan <jcowan@...>
usually bite the wax tadpole. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
--James Lileks http://www.reutershealth.com