J M Sykes wrote: > A colleague shares my belief that a decision was made, not too > many years ago, to abolish the circumflex in French. Are we > correct?
Not exactly. Cf. <http://www.academie-francaise.fr/langue/orthographe/druon.html>: | Apr�s avoir examin� cette question avec la plus grande rigueur | et en m�me temps la plus grande prudence, il est apparu au Conseil | sup�rieur qu'il convenait de conserver l'accent circonflexe sur la | lettre a, e et o, mais qu'il ne serait plus obligatoire sur les | lettres i et u, sauf dans les quelques cas o� il est utile : la | terminaison verbale du pass� simple et du subjonctif imparfait et | plus-que-parfait, et dans quelques cas d'homographie comme je�ne, | m�r et s�r. So, the accent circonflex is retained on �, �, and �, and its use on � and � has been restricted. > If there was such a decision, was it effective? According to <http://www.ids-mannheim.de/reform/Diskussionsbeitraege_kranz.html>, the reform has been adopted in 1990/1991, and never has been of- ficially retracted -- though the Acad�mie fran�aise has weakened their own original position by recommending that the reform be not effective at schools for an unspecified "time of probation". Best wishes, Otto Stolz
