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A detail of French orthography

  Tags: Writing | French
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1
Cainntear
Pentaglot
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Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
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 Message 9 of 10
18 April 2011 at 7:40pm | IP Logged 
The origin of this (so I'm told) was in the printers' workshops in Paris.

A fount (set of individual letters for printing) was more expensive to make and slower to use (hence more expensive again -- time is money!) than one without.

The printers therefore ditched capitalised accents as a competitive measure. It fed into people's writing (because people write the way they see things written) but with digital printing, there's no need for it any more so the accents are coming back.
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FrostBlast
Diglot
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Canada
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Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic

 
 Message 10 of 10
19 April 2011 at 3:21pm | IP Logged 
Jinx wrote:
Ah, okay. So you think it doesn't matter if my accent aigu ends up looking like a sort of smeared top line of the E? I suppose everyone would know what it's supposed to be, so it wouldn't really be a problem...


Many things in many peoples' writing look like smeared lines, so I'm sure you'll be fine. =]
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