[LINK] "For French speakers, an unwelcome grammatical hat trick"

[rfmcdonald]

MacLean's Martin Patriquin notes the controversy around the recent French language reforms, taking a look at controversy in Québec as well as in France.

For over 380 years, l’Académie française has been the protector and arbiter of all things having to do with the French language. From its offices in the Institut de France, an imposing, beaux arts-style half moon overlooking the Seine, l’Académie essentially dictates the rules governing the language for the roughly 220 million French speakers in the world. Its members wear filigreed blazers. Edicts, in the form of dictionaries, are issued.

It is therefore telling that the Académie distanced itself from the most recent réforme de l’orthographe, or orthography reform, which includes the partial elimination of the accent circonflexe, the hat-like accent that adorns the vowels of certain French words. “L’Académie française would like to remind people that it is not behind what has been designated the ‘orthography reform,’ which has been in the press recently, and which is to be applied in school programs at the beginning of the next academic year.” The changes actually came from the Conseil supérieur de la langue français, the French government’s advisory council, assured l’Académie.

[. . .]

In Quebec, grammatically based outrage can be as frothy as its French brethren—though it’s worth noting that the current Quebec government has yet to take an official position on the reforms. Nonetheless, the changes to the language will be implemented here as they are in France, according to a communiqué from l’Office québécois de la langue française.

Quebec polemicist Mathieu Bock-Côté called the reforms the work of “pseudo-linguists who practise an extreme form of relativism and tell us that it’s really not a big deal and that we have nothing to worry about.”

According to Quebec writer Denise Bombardier, the changes are a reflection of how “written [French] has deteriorated and will continue its steep decline, and no one but a few purists will be saddened.”