Re: French spelling scheme

We're looking forward to your respelling of English. Perhaps you could take
the time to do Tibetan too? :-)

                                                      Andreas

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>I've always loved orthography design, and have devised some sort of
>spelling "reform" (or just meddling) for most languages that I'm familiar
>enough with. This is an old one by me, though I've never presented it to
>the list...
>
>In respelling French, I set three aims: a) minimize or wholly eliminate
>diacritics - I always resented the time it took me to type that French
>homework; b) make French more graphically similar to the other Romance
>languages, and its ancestor, Latin; and c) all the while trying to bring
>the orthography closer to the spoken language, especially in conjugations
>and other morphological domains.
>
>In achieving the first aim, I first rejected the need to distinctuate non-
>conflicting homonyms (or different usages of the same morpheme, whatever we
>call it) by using the accent grave; so "ou" and "où" are both "ou". The
>preposition "à" is changed to "a", while the conflicting form "a", 3p sg
>of "avoir", is changed to "ha" (and so is the entire verb paradigm - je
>hai, tu has, il ha, etc).
>
>Then there's the circonflex, which I simply eliminate in full - there will
>be plenty of etymology when I'm done, anyways ;) ;) I do realize that the â
>is pronounced distinctly as [A] by a dwindling amount of pedants (or that's
>my impression, at least), but so be it.
>
>Finally, there's the accent aigu, accent grave, and pas-d'accent making an
>actual phonetic distinction between [e], [E], and [@] ({é}, {è}, and {e},
>respectively). It is my impression that those distinctions are not
>minimal... correct me if I'm wrong! :) To begin with, at least, I advance
>to delete both accents, briefly not noticing any cases where the French
>person would not be sure how to pronounce the unaccented word; "ai" could
>be used to clearly mark out any [E]'s, if need be. I'm forgetting the
>final -é; make that an -ee, and no more worries, just sit down and have a
>cup of "cafee" :) -ez can also be retained to indicate an underlying
>final /es/.
>
>Almost forgot the c-cedilla... Somewhat more problematic. For the time
>being, I suppose to simply replace it with "s" whenever applicable, though
>I'm sure the French would really turn their noses to a reformed "Sa
>va?" :) :)
>
>And I've never liked all those apostrophes. Why bother? Just mark it with
>an empty space: "l Avignon", "je t aime", "ce qu il ha fait", etc.
>
>Hah; done with the diacritics... more or less :) How did they come up with
>those in the first place? :)
>
>Now on to my favorite, the "Latinization" scheme. My principal move is the
>introduction of "silent l": syllable final {el}, {al}, and {ol} are
>pronounced as {eau}, {au}, and {ou} (I know, {eau} and {au} are pronounced
>the same - just hinting at where it's coming from), except when followed by
>a vowel, in which case they're fully pronounced (pretty much the rule for
>any final consonant in French). This actually improves the structure a lot:
>instead of the orthographic variations of the adjective in "beau chanson"
>and "bel homme", it's {bel} in both cases. Likewise, no -x plural thingie,
>just "bels chansons". This sure would have helped me, back then, to
>understand how à + le and à + les could become "au" and "aux"... this way,
>you'd have "al" (also for the "a l'" form) and "als". Even more profits,
>we'd see the return of "principals" and "animals". The relationship
>between -eau and -elle would be re-established orthographically: "chapeau"
> > "chapel", "bateau" > "batel".
>
>Note that the silent-l rule is hardly any more complicated or less
>intuitive than the current nasal-vowel-skewering and silent-final
>rules. "Bon" is pronounced quite different in "bon chanson" and "bon
>homme", yet the orthography doesn't care.
>
>I should note in passing that I'd do away with all unnecessary double-
>consonants; "lunettes" > "lunetes", "homme" > "home". Silent-e takes well
>enough care of those things. "ss" remains to mark /s/ as opposed to /z/,
>and "ll" is retained and given the Standard Spanish value of [j].
>
>You might be thinking that the silent-l rule would endanger existing final
>l's; why, we'd just add a magic e - "Rossignol" > "Rossignole".
>
>A slightly more controversial idea of mine is to replace most "eu" and oe-
>ligatures and "oeu" sequences with a simple "o". This is etymologically
>sound, and quite regular; the rule would be: pronounce back rounded before
>a non-silent m, otherwise front rounded (aperture as per current rules
>of "eu"). So we'd usher in a new age of "emperors" and "coulors". Some verb
>paradigms would become drastically more structural: "je pos, nous pouvons".
>
>The main problem would be various borrowed or learned /o/, such as
>in "motor". This might possibly be solved with the magic e: "motore". Not
>quite flexible enough, though... In any case, those are minor
>considerations.
>
>To increase facility, out with all those non-existing endings, such as 3p
>pl -ent in the regular verbs. So "ils parle ensemble", for heaven's sake.
>
>Finally, a few exceptions might be entertained to improve structurality:
>e.g. "eux" could be respelled to "els" and assigned a special
>pronunciation.
>
>Hmm, how to respell "est"? Out with the "s": "Il et alee." Which requires
>us to remove that pompous "t" of the conjunction "et": "Moi e toi."
>
>A quick sample text:
>
>"Le quatorce juillet et la fete nationale de la France. Al jour d hui, les
>drapels tricolores sont partout."
>
>"Excusez moi, quele hore et il? Il et huit hore moin quart."
>
>Thanks to ye Francophones for tolerating this so far,
>Óskar :)
>
>PS my spelling schemes are as much humorous as dead-serious. Please do not
>have strong feelings about anything I write of this kind :)
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