World Notes

Quelle horreur! Everyone knows the French language is sacrosanct. But that has ( not kept the government of Prime Minister Michel Rocard from trying to reform French spelling to make it easier.

The proposed changes will affect at most 4,000 of the 50,000 words in use, but such minor "rectifications" cut no ice with editors and academics who have launched a vigorous contre-attaque (new spelling: contrattaque). At the center of their protest is the circumflex accent, a little hat the French occasionally put over vowels (as in chateau and hotel, crouton and maitre). To simplify matters, the new rules would remove it from i's and u's.

Henri Troyat, a member of the prestigious French Academy, charged that the omission would "disfigure the soul of a word." Book editor Yves Berger bemoaned the loss "of this marvelous chapeau de gendarme ((policeman's hat))." The brouhaha grew worse over the past two weeks as more members of the academy openly broke with the majority who voted for Rocard's reform last May, and it is possible they may force another vote. The academy will discuss the issue at its Thursday meeting this week, and if it recants, the government will have to think again.