French Spelling Reform in the 16th Century: The Phonetic Orthographies of Louis Meigret and Jacques Peletier du Mans

French spelling has a reputation of being relatively difficult because of the fact that it is etymological and mainly based on the pronunciation of Old French. (In this way, it resembles English orthography, which reflects Middle English, rather than modern English, pronunciation.)

Because of this, it is perhaps unsurprising that, much as there have been a number of attempts to simplify English spelling, there have been some who have attempted to write French in a way that is closer to the pronunciation of spoken French.

One of these reformers was the grammarian Louis Meigret (c. 1510-1558), who developed an orthography intended to be more phonetic. He used it in, for example, his Defȩnſes de Louís Meigrȩt tovchant ſon Orthographie Françoȩze, contre lȩs calōnies de Glaumalis du Vezelet, ȩ de ſȩs adherans (Louis Meigret’s Defense of his French Orthography, against the Slander of Glaumalis du Vezelet and His Adherents), which starts like this (modernized spelling and English translation mine):

Come j’açheuoȩ de reuoȩr vn trȩtté qe j’ey dreſſé çet yuȩr touçhant la grammȩre Françoȩze, j’ey u çȩ’ derniers jours nouuȩlles d’vn trȩtté intitulé « de l’Antique eſcripture de la lāgue françoyſe & de ſa poeſie, cōtre l’Orthographe des Maigretiſtes ».

Comme j’achèvais de revoir un traité que j’ai dressé cet hiver touchant la grammaire française, j’ai eu ces derniers jours nouvelles d’un traité intitulé « de l’Antique écriture de la langue française et de la poésie, contre l’Ortographe des Maigretistes ».

After reviewing a treatise I wrote this winter on French grammar, I have recently learned about a treatise entitled On the Ancient Manner of Writing the French Language and on Poetry: against the Orthography of the Maigretists.

Interestingly, while researching this post, I found an answer to a question on Stack Exchange asking why the standard French word for “orthography” is orthographe and not orthographie that cites this very passage in Meigret’s book and discusses the history of French spelling reform.

The answer also mentions Jacques Peletier du Mans (1517-1582 or 1583), who also developed an orthography for French. The Wikipedia article on him gives an example from his Dialoguɇ Dɇ l’ortografɇ e prononciation françoȩſɇ written in his orthography:

Madamɇ, lɇ grand dɇſir quɇ j’auoę̀ dɇ deſſe̱ruir (a toutɇ ma poßibilite) la gracɇ ſouuɇreinɇ dɇ feuɇ la Reinɇ votrɇ tre dɇbonnerɇ e tre rɇgretteɇ merɇ, m’auoè̱t induìt a lui vouloę̀r dedier un mien Dialoguɇ dɇ l’Ortografɇ e Prononciation Françoȩſɇ. Mȩ́s j’è etè priuè du bien, lɇquel j’etoe̱ tout pré̱t arɇcɇuoę̀r : c’ȩ́t dɇ cɇ bon e auantageus rakkeulh qu’ȩllɇ ſouloę̀t fe̱rɇ a toutɇs pȩrſonnɇs qui auoȩ́t lɇ keur a bonɇs choſɇs, e ſingulierɇmant aus lȩttrɇs.

Interestingly, both orthographies spell the diphthong now spelled <oi> and pronounced [wa] (as in vouloir “to want” [vulwaʁ]) as some variant of oȩ (as in vouloę̀r), which is indicative of the fact that it was pronounced [we].

But the word feuɇ puzzles me. Fève means “bean”, but I’m not sure how that would fit into the phrase la gracɇ ſouuɇreinɇ dɇ feuɇ la Reinɇ (“the sovereign grace of feuɇ the Queen”). Apparently, fève can refer to a bean or trinket “hidden in a king cake”, but I don’t know if this is related to how feuɇ is used in the passage.

I also found the word ſouloę̀t fairly opaque at first, but after some searching, I discovered the archaic verb souloir, which is probably the infinitive of ſouloę̀t and means “to be in the habit of”. It is apparently from the Latin verb soleō, which also resulted in the Spanish verb soler (also meaning “to be in the habit of”), which, unlike souloir, is still in common use.

“Ideal Critic”: Non-Native Syntax and Native Linguistic Competence

There is an Itchy Feet strip from a few years ago titled “Ideal Critic” about the experience of learning a language and trying to get feedback from native speakers:

The question is, why are the sentences of the language learner in the comic incorrect? Well, let’s see.

The dialogue in the first panel begins with the request:

*Please to be telling me when I am make the mistakes when I speak yours language!

First, let’s consider the main clause before the two instances of the subordinating conjunction “when”:

*Please to be telling me.

One of the problems with this phrase is that it is supposed to be a command but contains no imperative form. Only the word “please” could potentially be used as an imperative verb (as in Please the judges to win the award), but (a) this is clearly not the intended meaning, with the word instead being used in its adverbial sense to make a command more polite, and (b) imperative please would have to be followed by an object (Please the judges), whereas the please in “Please to be telling me” is instead followed by an infinitive and a present participle.

We can remove the infinitive particle to to make the clause somewhat more palatable:

*Please be telling me.

Now we have what appears to be an imperative construction, since we have the bare form be. But even though auxiliary be can be used with present participles to form the present progessive (as in I’m asking you), this clause still feels “off”. The reason for this is that, unlike dynamic verbs (which refer to actions), stative verbs (which refer to states of being) like the auxiliary “be” in the clause are not usually used in imperatives. As Geoffrey Pullum explains, “Progressive be (like be generally) and perfect have are stative, and hence relatively infrequent in imperatives.”¹

In other words, we need to change the clause from the present progressive into the imperative by getting rid of the auxiliary and just using the bare form of the only other verb in the clause, “tell”. This way, we finally get the correct form of the clause:

Please tell me.

So far so good. Now, let’s try to add one of the subordinate clauses from the original sentence:

*Please tell me when I am make the mistakes.

In this subordinate clause, the words *I am make consist of a pronoun functioning as a subject, the first-person present simple form of be, and the bare verb make. Be can be used to form the progressive aspect or the passive voice, in which case it should be followed by some kind of participle (e.g. made or making), or it can be a copula, in which case it should be followed by a noun or adjective (e.g. I am hungry or I am a native speaker). Make is none of the above and so contributes to the ungrammaticality of the clause. We can fix this either by removing the auxiliary am or changing the form of make. For the sake of expediency, let’s do the latter. In that case, we get the sentence:

(*?)Please tell me when I make the mistakes.

This sentence is more acceptable but does not really fit the context, since the definite article the suggests that the character is talking about already known information–in this case, types of mistakes previously talked about–when this information has not actually been mentioned in the comic before. We can remove it to get the grammatical sentence:

Please tell me when I make mistakes.

Now, let’s add the final subordinate clause:

*Please tell me when I make mistakes when I speak yours language.

Here, the clause is mostly accurate, with only one issue: the word yours. The reason why yours is unacceptable here has to do with the way a noun phrase is structured and the functions of the different English possessives, which can be determiners or pronouns. In a noun phrase, the noun can be preceded by a pre-determiner, a determiner, a post-determiner, or one or more adjectives, in that order, as in the phrase All the many old books. Yours does not belong to any of these pre-nominal categories, since it’s a possessive pronoun; possessive pronouns are words like mine, ours, and yours that function as nouns or pronouns (as in This book is yours and not *This book is your) rather than determiners, and so can’t be inserted into the determiner slot before the noun language. In order to fix the clause, we need to change yours to the equivalent possessive determiner, your, to get the sentence:

Please tell me when I make mistakes when I speak your language.

Now, let’s see how Mr. Language Learner does when he tries to self-correct. His first correction of the first clause is:

*Be telling me please

This is somewhat of an improvement, since it at least uses a bare form of be rather than the infinitive, but the position of please is rather odd. When used in imperatives, please is placed at the beginning of the clause. The next self-correction is:

*Tell the please to be

Unlike the other examples of ungrammatical use, this one is clearly an exaggeration for comic effect that it is unlikely any speaker of English (whether native or non-native) would produce in real life. The overall syntactic structure of the clause in the comic is broadly correct; when used to refer to a command, the verb tell is followed by an indirect object and an infinitive (as in Tell him to go). The problem is that please is not a noun and can’t be an object or preceded by the. It would be pretty hard to tell *a please anything.

To recap:

• Imperatives should use bare forms of verbs (e.g. Be kind), not infinitives (e.g. *To be kind), even if they are preceded by please
• Imperatives should generally not use auxiliary verbs like progressive be or prefect have
• The adverb please should be used at the beginning of a clause in imperatives
• Forms of the verb be should be followed by a past or present participle (like made or making), an adjective, or a noun phrase, not a bare infinitive
• One of the uses of the definite article the is to refer to already known information
• Nouns can be preceded by a pre-determiner (e.g. all), determiner (e.g. the), or post-determiner (e.g. many)
• Possessives come in two forms, possessive determiners (like your) and possessive pronouns (like yours). Determiners can precede a noun in a noun phrase (your book), while possessive pronouns can’t (*yours book)
• The verb tell, when used to refer to a verbal command, should be followed by an indirect object and an infinitive (I told him to run)

Of course, it’s unlikely either of the two native speakers in the comic would be able to provide this kind of grammatical feedback. Itchy Feet previously touched upon the subject of native speakers having intuitive linguistic competence but lacking conscious knowledge of the rules that underlie it:

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^{1. Pullum, Geoffrey, and Rodney Huddleston, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p. 932.}