New French spelling
Linguistic Recommendation
The purpose of this recommendation is to inform the federal public service of the Translation Bureau's position on the new French spelling.
Position
The Translation Bureau considers both the new and the traditional French spelling to be correct.
What is it?
The new French spelling is an initiative of the Conseil supérieur de la langue française (France) to simplify the French language and correct some anomalies. It involves a set of rules and a list of about 2 000 words (5 000, if you include rare and technical words).
| New spelling | Change |
|---|---|
| aigüe, ambigüe | diaeresis shifted from the ë to the ü |
| gout, boite, connaitre, apparaitre, trainer, bruler | circumflex accent deleted on the î and û |
| exéma, nénufar, ognon, relai | letters replaced or one letter deleted |
| bonhommie, charriot, combattivité, boursoufflé | consonant added or deleted to ensure uniformity with bonhomme, charrue, battre and soufflé |
| deux-mille-trois-cent-cinquante-deux | hyphen added between all words that make up a number |
| contrappel, entretemps | hyphen deleted in compounds beginning with contre- and entre- |
| un cure-ongle, des cure-ongles; un après-midi, des après-midis | in the second element of a compound noun: letter s deleted in the singular or letter s added in the plural (as opposed to the current spelling: un cure-ongles, des après-midi) |
Findings
- Many recognized reference works and spell-checkers have accepted the new French spelling, either in whole or in part.
- Many organizations and bodies consider the new spelling correct:
- Conseils supérieurs de la langue française (France and Quebec)
- Académie française (France)
- Office québécois de la langue française
- the ministries of education of France, Belgium and Switzerland
- the Ministère de l'Éducation of Quebec, the Ministry of Education of Saskatchewan, the Department of Education of New Brunswick and Alberta Education
References
- GQMNF, the Groupe québécois pour la modernisation de la norme du français
- RENOUVO, the Réseau pour la nouvelle orthographe du français (made up of associations from France, Belgium, Switzerland and Haiti, and the GQMNF from Québec)
- List of new French spellings:
- complete list of about 5 000 words, including rare and technical words: Grand vadémécum de l'orthographe moderne recommandée : cinq millepattes sur un nénufar (RENOUVO, 2009)
- abridged list of about 2 000 words: Le millepatte sur un nénufar – Vadémécum de l'orthographe recommandée (RENOUVO, 2005)
- General information:
Linguistic Recommendation reference number
REC-8/2010-01
- Date modified: