Why is the French language so easy to read and so hard to write? Nearly 20 years after the language reforms of 1990, journalist François de Closets and researcher Jean-Pierre Jaffré have just separately published two books on the subject of orthography. The rules for French spelling first began to take shape in the 16th century – so where do they stand today?

What are the origins of French spelling rules?

François de Closets: French began as a spoken language which was a fusion of various pre-existing tongues – Latin, German and so on. Back then, the only written language was Latin. It was the language of religion, of the state, of the law courts. In Latin, a letter corresponded to each spoken sound. Written French when it came into being was based on the Latin alphabet, but in the meantime other sounds had appeared in the language. So the scribes – who were all Latin scholars – devised a new phonetic basis for written French. And to lend it a certain dignity they filled it with consonants, in most cases silent consonants. That’s how French became weighed down by all these phantom letters. Then when printing came along there were new constraints. Punctuation suddenly became vitally important.

Jean-Pierre Jaffré: It was what’s been called the spelling war. In the mid 16th century, on the one hand you had supporters of ‘visual spelling’ like the lexicographer and printer Robert Estienne; and on the other there were the ‘poets’ like Du Bellay and Ronsard who wanted to capture the intrinsic sound of the language. The Académie Française fluctuated between the two, and ever since we’ve been feeling our way forward.

FdC: Before the scribes came along, French was a very Germanic language — with lots of little words. The Germans blurted their words out, while the Latins liked to savour them. So it meant that when it was written down, French was reconfigured. The scribes put in all these Latin characters, even though they didn’t correspond to what was actually spoken. The language became overloaded, but at the time who cared? It was the scribes who were doing all the writing, and this was their business. But later, who was learning Latin? Girls. So in the 17th century, it was women who began to lose patience with this linguistic machismo. At the hôtel de Rambouillet (centre of the female literary movement known as les Précieuses), they began to write words more simply. The men found it grotesque. But today if you look at their Dictionnaire des Précieuses, you can see that many of the suggestions for orthography are actually very modern.

JPJ: Something similar happened in Japan. Around the 12th century, women of the imperial court wanted to write poetry, so they started to look at the way Japanese was written down. The Japanese language was originally borrowed from Chinese. But because the grammar and conjugation were different, it meant that syllables had to be added at the end of the Chinese characters. By devising new syllabic representations, these imperial women developed a spelling system that was easier and more regular. For me it’s evidence of a feminine tradition in the development of writing, which places greater emphasis on representing sound rather than meaning.

Q. If one were to draw up a league table of difficulty, where would French be?

JPJ: I’d say its spelling rules are the most complicated in the world, along with Japanese – or at least the Chinese side of Japanese.

FdC: The first problem is lexical. If I give you a sound, how do you write down the corresponding word? Take the sound So. That same sound has several different ways of being transcribed. It could be sceau or seau or sot. Then there are all the silent consonants. Why is there a z at the end of nez? Why does vingt have a g and trente not? Take the line Les jolies fleurs sont roses. Why is the plural signified so many times? Why does festival become festivals in the plural, while cheval becomes chevaux? French grammar abounds with exceptions. It’s a reader’s language. It’s very easy to read but devilish hard to write.

JPJ: The way words have to agree with each other according to gender and number – that goes back to old French. Like in Latin or German, back then words which went together as far as meaning was concerned were not necessarily placed side by side in the sentence. So if you couldn’t align words by position, you aligned them via their written form. But then from the Middle Ages word order became more and more fixed. Words which went together were increasingly placed side by side, and grammatical agreement gradually became redundant. Thus today in English for example, adjectives no longer agree with their nouns. And in Chinese, where there’s no article, corresponding words are all placed next to each other. When it comes to conjugating verbs, why does Je prends have a d and Je peins not have a d, even though both come from root verbs that have a d (prendre and peindre)? Each case has to be looked at separately, and there’s inevitably a long list of exceptions. The problem is that these days schools do not have the time for that kind of attention to detail.

Q: So should French spelling be reformed?

JPJ: Bernard Cerquiglini wrote a book entitled Éloge de la variante (In praise of variants) and I think he was right. For me it’s important to master the essential core of spelling, leaving room for variation at the edges. For example today we accept the word événement written as évènement. An acute accent and a grave accent are both permitted. This kind of variant is becoming standard.

FdC: I basically agree. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, France was in a state of permanent linguistic reform. Every ten years there was a new change which was gradually accepted into the system. We could easily have gone on with that right into the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries. That way we would have avoided the situation we have today in which people who know perfectly well how to write French still make mistakes. A large part of our spelling system is totally divorced from logic. From my personal point of view, I do not think this overly complex orthography is part of what makes French a beautiful language. For me the complexities are like wrong notes in a melody. We can strike them out without changing the essential tune.

JPJ: I have always disputed your argument that it is too late to carry out reforms. I don’t think it is ever too late. Reforms depend on whether they fulfil a demand. Today we have a peculiar situation, in which the number of different views of what constitutes correct orthography has considerably increased. On top of that, we live de facto in a world not of growing multilingualism, but of ever more diverse irregularity in writing our own language. The Internet and the experience of writing on-line has spawned a huge number of different forms. But even in the weirdest spelling systems, comprehensibility is essential – so there are still rules. The core essentials of spelling are intact. That being the case, I think we could keep going down the road we timidly started out in in 1990 (the year of a limited reform) and simplify our spelling rules further. For example take the issue of double consonants. Historically they are an aberration. Some 40 percent of them are there simply to signify the preceding vowel sound – because up to the 17th century there were no written accents which would have done the job instead. But when accents were instated, they didn’t remove the double consonants. Same thing with plurals. The Académie could have chosen consistency. Instead it was totally haphazard: nouns take s in the plural, while verbs take z. Originally a noun like amitié took z in the plural.

FdC: When the scribes were in control, complication was not an issue. But then the written language became the property of the people. What they should have done is adapt spelling to the people, rather than vice versa. From the 19th century on, the literary world – which in the 17th century had been in favour of modernising French orthography – totally lost interest in the issue and even opposed the idea of change. But today we are going through the biggest revolution since the advent of printing. It’s nothing to do with the fact that we’re using keyboards, because after all the type-writer made no difference to the orthography question. No, what’s changing is what the Quebecois call clavardage – which means chatting via a keyboard. Today the way people write on-line is completely different from the scriptural function of writing as it developed over thousands of years. On-line, it’s argument; it’s speech; it’s dialogue! Language splits into different shapes. Everything is in flux. When it comes to the way we perceive what is written down, that changes everything. Who wants to make constant corrections to what they have written? So young people are beginning to lose that fetishistic, almost religious, respect we used to have for each individual word. Because looking back, that was how an illiterate populace originally was able to master the writing of the scribes. It was because they were made to feel an utter terror of making a mistake. Spelling became a form of etiquette, and not to have mastered it was like a social stain. It meant being excluded from education, from the administration, even from society. The French were so frightened by the idea of orthographical transgression that they put huge efforts into getting it right. And they succeeded. So the corner-stone of spelling has been this concept of error, which was interiorised by an entire nation. However now – since the 1990s – we’ve been seeing standards of spelling in France simply collapse. And that’s because of writing on-line.

JPJ: I’m not sure I agree with that entirely. Since the 19th century, we’ve been conditioned to think that if you change spelling, you change the language. But today there’s been an explosion of different types of graphic representation. In Japan you can see the different methods. Now you can write Japanese in syllable form. So we’re getting used to a world where different forms of graphic expression co-exist. Just because young people nowadays write in a certain style using a keyboard, that doesn’t mean thay aren’t capable of also mastering traditionally correct spelling. Maybe they’ll have difficulties, but no more nor less than before. Writing needs to be approached in the same way as language itself: each situation demands a different register.

FdC: But in the 17th century it was the printers and the writers who imposed their ways…

JPJ: Yes, it was Corneille who imposed the use of accents.

FdC: They took possession of spelling in exactly the same way that artists take possession of their palette of colours. But in the private world, writing had been a habit that was quite naturally abounding in mistakes and personal creations and short-cuts. At the time no-one saw these as errors. That concept did not exist. There were two separate systems – the writers’ and everyone else’s. Then in 1835 the minister of public instruction François Guizot announced that the official spelling would from then on be the one decided by the Académie Française. In other words ordinary illiterate people were going to have to learn spelling with the same degree of expertise previously only expected of clerks and print-correctors. Now there would be only one single system of spelling – the official one. But with on-line writing, it is like we are going back in time to when there was still that gulf between private and professional writing. The difference is that today the two systems depend on the same tool – the keyboard. And that’s the challenge. The problem is that at schools they still teach the language via hand-written dictation.

JPJ: Personally I think dictation is far from being a spent force. It comes in very handy when it comes to selecting or hiring people. The issue of spelling is not whether you know it, but whether you can put it into practice at the right moment. Studies on the human brain show that habitual usage of a language and knowledge of its grammar are quite separate. For example we know instinctively that certain words are pronounced the same way even though they are spelt differently. But the actual grammar is processed in a different area of the brain.

FdC: I think computer technology could be used to teach spelling to very young children – though they’d probably have to learn the basics first. We should use computers as a teacher-replacement. The teachers get the programme to set questions, then the computer sends back the answers, correcting the pupil’s problems. Right now we’re suffering the disadvantages of on-line writing without exploiting the possible benefits.

JPJ: Let’s stay on this notion of the computer as corrector – the spell-check idea. In the future, we’ll be speaking the written word. We’ll dictate (and the computer will write down). The problem now with the keyboard is its tiny scale. You can see it with text messages. Their form is conditioned by the extremely limiting nature of the material on which they are written. You use the minimum necessary. In addition, I think that the computer as spelling corrector poses an ethical problem. The teaching profession may have missed the bus as far as technology is concerned, but here we are talking about a much bigger issue of human autonomy. A keyboard is one thing. It’s a kind of prosthetic limb. But computers go further and personally I think the human being should remain master of the situation.

FdC: Yes, but not everyone is lucky enough to have the right kind of visual memory that makes for good spelling. People who are stuck in orthographic uncertainty – and I know because I am one of them ! – they start writing and then suddenly bam! Into a brick wall. Their mental dictionary is a blank page. In situations like that the machine is a real aid. But computer specialists will also tell you one thing: they can never design a corrector for the illiterate. If the person doesn’t understand how words work and how grammar works, then it’s hopeless. It’s like taking a car to the street-corner and then saying to a youngster: There, take the wheel. Without having learned to drive!

JPJ: When it comes to spelling, one thing that is interesting is that very complicated words often present the least difficulties, because they are also very common. Take piscine (swimming-pool) for example. All the kids know how to spell it because they see it all the time.

FdC : We are entering a period in which common practice is once again taking possession of spelling. In the 17th century, certain rules fell into disuse, others became the norm. The Académie wrote it all down. Then in the July monarchy (1830-1848) the state carried out its orthographical putsch. Now we are heading towards a situation similar to what’s happening with English in the United States, where words are simplified by customary usage. Thus night can equally be nite.

JPJ : I agree with that. We’ll see happening internally in languages what’s already taken place externally. For example look at Brazilian in relation to Portuguese. In Brazilian the p in the word optimizar has been dropped. And now, by a retroactive process, it is also being dropped in Portuguese. When two variants co-exist, the one that does the job most efficiently is the one that survives.

Q. When French spelling underwent a process of reform in 1990 (limited in scope and patchily observed ever since : ed.), there was immense controversy. What was at stake at the time ?

FdC : Nations love to conjure up worlds of conflict in their collective imaginations. So the whole of French society has been organised for generations around the idea of class struggle. It’s the same thing with orthography. We’ve created an imaginary world in whch spelling has become something almost sacred. Correct spelling is now like the essence of the motherland. It’s the flag, it’s Notre-Dame, it’s La Marseillaise ! Correct spellng has become more important than French itself, because spelling is the bit that we actually see. People have adopted a posture which they think is a principled position : defending the language by fighting reform. They actually think they are defending French culture !

JPJ : There is also a more pragmatic rationale. Spelling is a tool constructed for an elite social class. What happened with school teachers in the 19th century is very symptomatic. Up till then school-masters were in fact terrible at spelling. But in one generation that had changed and from then on teachers were absolutely opposed to reform. Right up until the 1970s spelling was a tool for selection. To get into lycée (secondary school), you had to pass a dictation test. All those who eventually mastered proper spelling did so by immense effort, and they do not see why today others should escape the hurdle.

FdC : People have horrific visions of what purely phonetic spelling would mean. But let me remind you that it was the Belgians who originally invented spelling competitions. Since 1990, they (unlike the French) have actually adopted the changes set out in the 1990 reforms, and it has not caused the slightest difficulty in the competitions.

Q. Is this debate being conducted in other countries too ?

JPJ : It’s everywhere. One thing you see a lot of is linguists who are suggesting ways of writing to societies that come from an oral tradition. There you can imagine how the debate is loaded with issues of personal taste, cultural preference and so on. The Belgians have done something pretty amazing. Since the 1990 reforms newspapers like Le Soir actually offer the two ways of spelling simultaneously on the Internet.

FdC : For 50 years now the French-speaking world has been asking for spelling to be simplified. Take Switzerland. Youngsters who do their military service there have to undergo a dictation test. The results are that 90 percent of Italian-speakers pass without a mistake ; 60 percent of German-speakers pass without a mistake ; but only 20 percent of French-speakers do. The Italians know how to write their language when they are still in primary school. The French keep learning right through secondary. We have no awareness at all of the orthographical problems – or lack of them — of other languages. Foreigners know because they live with them.

Q. Jean-Pierre Jaffré, in your book Orthographier (Correct Writing) you speak of 6,912 languages in the world today. At the same time half the world’s population speaks only 10 of those languages. Is this phenomenon set to accelerate ?

JPJ : It’s a mathematical certainty. The more we improve means of communication, the faster the number of languages will decrease. Some of these 6,000 or so languages are spoken by no more than 10 or so people. One of them – in South America — was spoken by just one person, who’s since died. This is the big challenge facing regional languages. Why speak them if they serve no essential function ? English is a language of communication. One might therefore suppose that it is eating its way across the globe. What’s happening in fact is that it is becoming multiform. Variants of English are appearing that are a million miles from Oxford and Cambridge. These are pidgin and creole languages. It is perfectly possible that the differences with the mother English become as large as those that today separate Serbian and Croatian. For cultural reasons, languages that were once similar can separate.

Q. And so where does French stand ?

JPJ : Everything depends on English. Let us suppose that its development leads to a kind of bilingualism : everyone speaking the super-language of communication as well as their own personal language. In that case French becomes just another local language. But then it could also remain an important language by virtue of the large-number of people living in Francophone countries. At this stage, we just can’t tell what will happen. The other great unknown is Chinese. It used to be thought that China would move towards English, via Hongkong. But instead Hongkong is becoming more Chinese-speaking. Teaching of Chinese is increasing steadily in France. Will it become a dominant language ? Much will depend on the country’s economic and cultural influence. Because language is really a front for political power.

FdC : The future of the French language will depend more on innovation than on self-defence. The modern world has a constant need to create new words. English is out there, neologising like crazy. So French has to react and become more dynamic. When computer technology first appeared, we were stuck with computer and software. So we invented informatique and logiciel. If we need a word, let’s make one up. Back in the 16th and 17th centuries French was the language of diplomacy and of the royal courts. It succeeded because even though it was intrinsically hard to learn, in private people were able to speak it very loosely and very freely. Nowadays any deviation from the rules leads to ridicule.

François de Closets is a journalist. He presented the magazine programme Médiations on TF1 television from 1987 to 1992, and in 1982 wrote the best-seller Toujours plus. He has since produced numerous other television programmes and books. He can be heard regularly on France Inter radio and France 2 television. He has also written for L’Express, L’Événement du jeudi and Le Nouvel Observateur magazines. A graduate of Sciences Po, François de Closets has long suffered from difficulties with spelling. He recently wrote an investigation into the subject entitled Zéro faute, l’orthographe, une passion française (published by Mille et une nuits).

Jean-Pierre Jaffré has been a researcher at the state-owned CNRS since 1987. He is a former member alongside Nina Catach of a team looking into the “history and structure of orthography and systems of writing.” He joined the Laboratory for Studying the Acquisition and Pathology of Languages among Children (LEAPLE), where he is co-chair of the Litéracie team alongside Liliane Sprenger-Charolles. As a linguist he is interested principally in the functioning and acquisition of writing systems. In 2008 he was joined by Michel Fayol in writing the book Orthographier (published by Presses Universitaires de France).