The five letters of the alphabet on a circumflex in French.

The caret is one of five diacritics used in French. It caps the vowels a, e, i, o and u.

It has three main functions, which are not mutually exclusive:

• it specifies the pronunciation of a, an e or o;
• it indicates the amussement an old letter;
• it serves, incidentally, of discriminating sign (so it's a diacritic in the etymological sense) to distinguish homophones.

In some cases, the circumflex has no role in language specific.

Early uses

The circumflex appeared for the first time in French (or in the typography West) in the ^sixteenth century. It is the ancient Greek , as typeset at the time (and still now for the most part), which provided the diacritic consisting simply of a meeting of a acute accent and a serious (for History of Greek circumflex accent, see the article Diacritics of the Greek alphabet ). It seems that the anatomist and grammarian Jacques Dubois , "said Silvius, the first in importing for his language (though he wrote in Latin ).

Several grammarians of this century have tried to give him a role in the spelling of their language, a role he has not necessarily kept. It must indeed wait for the ^eighteenth century that its use is standardized and becomes close to that given to it today.

In Jacobus Sylvius

Sylvius is the indicator of the circumflex diphthongs graphics (or false diphthongs , as the French of that time has already handed over diphthongs). It shows the motivation of its choice in his book Iacobii Sylvii Ambiani In Linguam Gallicam Isagoge una cum eiusdem ex Hebraeis Latinogallica Grammatica graeca and authoribus Latinus ("An Introduction to the Gallic language

The caret is opposed to the same groups of letters, the umlaut (also placed between two vowels). The problem is that, as reported by Silvius, there are only few cases in which the letters of these groups must be ordered separately: Milk ("I milk") ~ treat ("I cheated"), which is normal: the French of that time has no real diphthongs, the few reported cases is rather coalescences , as betrayed, who did not declare the rest as the English try / dist /. Sylvius is however great its use umlauts for scoring sounds Greek or Latin. This rating between the diphthongs graphics to "diphthongs" Oral is however quite artificial for French. The caret is not justified, the umlaut amply sufficient for the few ambiguous forms (of which this is an example).

In this notation, there is nothing left in the current spelling, which has retained only the umlaut (Sylvius is not however the inventor). Yet this grammarian pinpoints an important problem and it does explain that in his day had a spelling is ambiguous:

• it's either Chez Etienne Dolet

  Etienne Dolet , in his way of accurately translate one language into Aultre: aduantage of the punctuation of the language French fashion, plus accents of ycelle ( 1540 ), uses the circumflex (written this time between two letters) to score three metaplasm :

  1. The syncope (missing a syllable internal): lai ^ rra, pai ^ ra, Urai ^ tion (real ^ tion), Don ^ ra to leave (leave), will pay uraiemt (really), will. We must not lose sight of that before the fourteenth ^century, the e spent writing is pronounced in any position. They said therefore pay .

  Dolet therefore the circumflex mark phonemes amus: it is one of the main functions of the current combining French. However, the examples he gives, just use this trick again, except age in really, the old e in hiatus is simply not written in the feminine plural as thoughts, no change was made, presumably to keep the brands inflectional , useful reading. His testimony offers a twofold advantage: in addition to the history of typography, it is important for the historical phonetics of French and lets you know that it was his time spent as e (and other vowels) in s'amur hiatus began.

  We can let conclude Dolet himself: What are the precepts Changing the timbre of the vowels

  Note: it does now, unless otherwise stated, that the circumflex as used currently.

  The presence of a circumflex over a, e and o note in most cases a change in pronunciation:

  • A Name of a letter amussement

    In many cases, a caret indicates that the word contained a letter now missing because the phoneme it was noted amu time.

    Disappearance of a former s

    This is by far the most popular phenomenon. The majority of cases from a / s / position supporting, that is to say, before another consonant. / S / before a consonant was amu the ^eleventh century , around 1066 , causing a compensatory lengthening (and a permanent closure of the vowel / o /), which faded after the ^eighteenth century. Of neologisms later, however, have been introduced into the lexicon of new French words containing / s / pressing. As we shall see, the situation is complex.

    Although the spelling has long kept the presence of / s /, there has been decided that the eighteenth ^century (from the edition of 1740 Dictionary of the French Academy ) get rid of it and note disappearance by the systematic use of the circumflex, which, more used to specify the pronunciation of some vowels carrying him, as o

    In the ^seventeenth century , yet few attempts to change the spelling had emerged, without much success. Pierre Corneille , who is also the opposition must between E and E, used his lyrics in the long s , s to indicate that s amu lengthened the preceding vowel and removed the s silent. It gives the following examples in his note to the reader 's theater P. Cornelius, reveu Disappearance of other letters

    Furthermore s other letters amues were represented by a caret. This is the case of vowels in hiatus with the first one was pronounced more or who had contracted with the following:

    • aage age;
    • baailler yawn;
    • drunk drunk (both spellings are accepted);

    The case is frequent in words where-u is derived from ancient diphthongs been Medieval / ey / (the umlaut is not written originally) came to pronounce / y / but had written conservatively. It was not until the late eighteenth ^century that the spelling, hesitating between Eu (the umlaut is also used in French to mark a vowel silent) had or , binds:

    • deu due (of duty);
    • meu moved (to move);
    • creu increased (to grow);
    • sor safe
    • cruement bluntly;
    • murderous couples.

    Some forms have been concerned that today no longer take the accent seu collat su (to know) or have little could. For verbs, by virtue of the analogy , the past participles in-u do an accent as possible to avoid the homographies (see below).

    In the case of the word tithe, circumflex accent comes from a amussement x:

    • tithe tithing: the 4 ^th edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy (1762) notes that "we do not decide the point X which only serves to lengthen the first syllable" . The next edition (1798) adopt the spelling tithe.

    Other cases

    Sometimes the caret has no definite origin. It may, for example, be added to a word to make it more prestigious is the case in the throne or supreme advocates. On the other hand, the first person of the plural of the preterit of the indicative , the caret has been added by analogy with that, motivated, the second person plural:

    • Latin cantastis Old French chantastes sing (after amussement / s / supporting);
    • Latin cantavimus Old French sang sang (sing with contamination).

    This emphasis is now mandatory for all first person plural simple past.

    Sometimes the only explanation is a probable imitation of another word where the emphasis is justified: traitor mimics master (master of), funny imitating role (where the focus is only used to specify the pronunciation of closed / o / ).

    Signe discriminant

    While normally it is the grave accent mark that is used primarily to discriminate in French (where the ~, where ~ or ~ it here, at ~ a, etc..), the circumflex, for historical reasons, came to play a similar role. In fact, cases of preventable homographies are almost all explained by the reasons we have seen above: it would be wrong to say certain words in it is a sign that would have added discriminating as was done with the grave accent. In fact, it helps to clarify ambiguities, however, which in the words coming from u had allowed him to sometimes be preserved. It has shown that the circumflex accents from ancient diphthongs E monophtongues Eu Notable Cases

    • The final vowel of a verb in the third person of singular in subjunctive imperfect is always a caret, for etymological reasons: Old French (be) chantast (it) sing, (that) conust (he) knew, the presence of an accent can completely change the meaning of a sentence. For example,

    "I dreamed of a woman who was beautiful" (verb in the imperfect subjunctive)

    has a very different meaning

    "I dreamed of a woman who was beautiful" (simple past tense, this example is due to Jacques Cellard);

    • the verb hate is one of the few who, in the simple past indicative and the subjunctive imperfect, do not wait for the circumflex vowel should be struck has the umlaut: we Haimes, you Haiti, that he hates;
    • circumflex accent, when it strikes a verbal root, by analogy continues even if the pronunciation of the vowel is not be justified: I dream (of I Resve) Spelling of 1990

      Aware of the major difficulties posed by the use of the circumflex and the number of inconsistencies in his job, experts representing the competent French authorities responsible for developing simplified the spelling of French official suggested in 1990 of spelling corrections , published in the Official Gazette of the French Republic . The circumflex is optional on i and u, except in cases where this leads to ambiguity (it grows grow verb retains its circumflex to distinguish themselves from verb believe he thinks).

      These recommendations are not implemented in France when they were ratified by Belgium and Canada by the Boards of the French language and by the International Council of French (for French-speaking ).

      List of words with accents

      The lists below identify words with a caret in the last edition of at least one of the following commonly used dictionaries: Larousse, Robert, Hachette and Littre.

      Some dictionaries list the double graphs from the 1990 recommendation entered partially in use. Thus Littre recognizes the word "box", but not Cambridge. Conversely, the Littr does not admit the spelling "know" when it comes to the same recommendation in 1990.

      div class = "NavFrame" style = "clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em; width: 99%; border-style: solid;-moz-border-radius: 0;-webkit-border-radius: 0; border- color: # AAAAAA; background-color: # FFFFFF; "alt =" References

      1. It is not possible here to make the spelling of the author. This place indeed the circumflex and diaeresis (we will see below), not one of the two vowels of the diphthong, but in between. The image above shows these graphs. Unlike the copy here given its text, there is no emphasis to isolate autonyms. Punctuation is modernized (no space before the comma, a space after the colon).
      2. Note that Sylvius is based on the pronunciation of the Greek of his time: the diphthong have, indeed, had (as in Latin) monophtongue long. In classical Greek, however, read like ouch.
      3. This custom has survived in typography, where, when a letter is missing it is replaced by an accent until they complete the composition of the sheet but to print out and start correcting the first draft. This sign was called caret (Latin word meaning "missing") or caron.
      4. Thomas Sbillet included the Treaty of Dolet's edition of 1556 's Art of Poetry. It is printed on the circumflex vowels for syncope (case 1): Lair, pair, really See also

         Related articles

         • Diacritic ;
           • diacritics of the Latin alphabet :
             • caret ,
             • diacritics used in French ,
         • Latin alphabet ;
         • Corrections of spelling in French in 1990.

         Bibliography

         • Bernard Cerquiglini , Accent Memorial, 165 pages, Editions de Minuit, 1995 , ISBN 2-7073-1536-2

         External Links

         • Examples of changes the meaning of sentences due to the circumflex
         

         The version of the October 12, 2007 This article has been accepted as "good article", that is to say that it meets quality standards for style, clarity, relevance, citation of sources and illustration.

         • Portal of the French language and Francophonie
         • Portal of writing

Leave a Reply

Frequently Asked Questions