Re: French uppercase accented letters (was: Re: Comments on FCD 5218)
A 10:17 2001-11-30 +0100, Thierry Sourbier a écrit : >To comment on a previous remarks made in the thread: > > > Alain LaBonté wrote: > > it is true that there has always been a usage for unaccented uppercase > > initials of sentences (or proper names), on both sides of the Atlantic > > indeed, and for consistent accentuation, regardless of case. > >While I'm not disagreing with the previous comment, we can note that on >www.larouse.net, accents are used even on the first letter of the sentences >(e.g. "À la fois plate-forme de diffusion"). I could not find any >documentation confirming/restricting such a use. I don't even want to think >on how such a usage could be computerized :). [Alain] I said in the remaining of the article that one had to observe the articles in main French dictionaries. I should have given the consluion: all entries headings are in capital letters, of course with full-fledged accented letters everywhere a word has an accent... Another place to look in Paris: even the august stone building of the ASSEMBLÉE NATIONALE shows an accent. And I was personally witness that the PALAIS DES CONGRES had to put a stainless steel grave accent in 1991 (if my memory is good) to become, from a palace for fish, a real PALAIS DES CONGRÈS... I guess many were insulted to be considered as fish when they were going to marketing exhibitions... (: Alain LaBonté. Québec
Re: French uppercase accented letters (was: Re: Comments on FCD 5218)
If you consider that today all end up being a question of money, you can notice that the French bank notes (soon to be extinct) use uppercase accented letters (e.g. "FALSIFIÉ" in the "do-not-copy-me" notice ). Yet, as it was previously noted, a great deal of confusion still exist today in France regarding accents & uppercase. An illustration can be found in "Le Monde" (one of the most respected French newspaper): in www.lemonde.fr there is no accent on uppercase letters on the front page. Yet, within the site some articles make use of uppercase accented letters (e.g. "DÉBUT JUILLET 1995, ..."). In another French newspaper (www.liberation.com) , the same inconsistencies can be noticed as accents are used for the menus (e.g. "MULTIMÉDIA") but not for the headers (e.g. "Economie"). An explanation could that computers were used in some occurences to change the casing making it "right". Indeed typing uppercase capitalized letter is a bit trickier than typing their lowercase counterpart (e.g. SHIFT + "é" gives you a "2"...), which may explain the low usage today. (You can see the French keyboard layout at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/keyboards/keyboards.asp) For those who need some statistics may be you could survey the web for the various usage for the name "États-Unis" (= United States). Both Le Monde and Libération use "Etat-Unis" despite what the dictionnaries say. I found a bibliography in French on the subject of "uppercase & accents" but I do not own any of the book mentionned so I could not verify what they say (http://www.ccdmd.qc.ca/Sitedocu/f0020076.htm). To comment on a previous remarks made in the thread: > Alain LaBonté wrote: > it is true that there has always been a usage for unaccented uppercase > initials of sentences (or proper names), on both sides of the Atlantic > indeed, and for consistent accentuation, regardless of case. While I'm not disagreing with the previous comment, we can note that on www.larouse.net, accents are used even on the first letter of the sentences (e.g. "À la fois plate-forme de diffusion"). I could not find any documentation confirming/restricting such a use. I don't even want to think on how such a usage could be computerized :). Cheers, Thierry. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> www.i18ngurus.com - Open Internationalization Resources Directory
Re: French uppercase accented letters (was: Re: Comments on FCD 5218)
A 12:33 2001-11-29 -0800, Kenneth Whistler a écrit : > > Ask your "relatively authoritative sources" if they ever opened a Larousse > > or Robert dictionary. If they answer yes, ask them what they > observe... (; > >http://www.larousse.net > >L'ENCYCLOPÉDIE LAROUSSE KLÉIO 2001 > >and > >Le Dictionnaire de l'Économie de A - Z > >advertised on the home page. > >The Collins Robert French Dictionary, 1987, p. 239, entry: "Écosse, nf >Scotland" > >--Ken You bet... And the caption of advertisement for LE PETIT LAROUSSE ILLUSTRÉ says "100 PLANCHES INÉDITES"... Bottom of the page: ACTUALITÉ and LANGUE FRANÇAISE And of course a hyperlink to ESPAÑOL (it is not cheating: some words borrowed from Spanish use tildes, e.g. CAÑON) Alain
Re: French uppercase accented letters (was: Re: Comments on FCD 5218)
> Ask your "relatively authoritative sources" if they ever opened a Larousse > or Robert dictionary. If they answer yes, ask them what they observe... (; http://www.larousse.net L'ENCYCLOPÉDIE LAROUSSE KLÉIO 2001 and Le Dictionnaire de l'Économie de A - Z advertised on the home page. The Collins Robert French Dictionary, 1987, p. 239, entry: "Écosse, nf Scotland" --Ken
Re: French uppercase accented letters (was: Re: Comments on FCD 5218)
A 12:34 2001-11-29 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : >Sorry about the previous message. I hit "Send Now" by accident while trying >to select some text. > >In a message dated 2001-11-29 8:58:42 Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] >writes: > > > This in turn led to the myth that the French do not use > > uppercase accented letters... > > > > Please spread the word. My French colleagues are frustrated and embarassed > > by the continued propagation of this unfortunate myth. > >Unfortunately, I have seen this myth written in some relatively authoritative >sources, including some from France. For my part I am glad that it is not >true, as it created yet one more annoying difference between French French >vs. Canadian French that did not have to exist. [Alain] French has the same history on both sides of the Atlantic (it is a normalized language and we all recognize it among francophones). That said, it is true that there has always been a usage for unaccented uppercase initials of sentences (or proper names), on both sides of the Atlantic indeed, and for consistent accentuation, regardless of case. And the typographic convention of both usages always coinhabited (depending on the competence of typographists and their school of thought)... The sad habit not to use accents on capitals, however, has been reinforced since the appearance of accents in French at the Renaissance by 3 factors: -stone carvers did not want to scrap their job with those minute inovations; -in the XIX th Century and up to the second part of the XXth Century, mechanical typerwiters had problems with the dual placement of accents on lowercase/capital and hence it was technically resolved to ignore the problem and not provide a way to put them on capitals, more rarely used, in any way, than lowercase (which is certainly more true than in German); -because of the embarrassment caused by the latter, teachers have taugh (on both sides of the Atlantic) in the XXth Century, that one should not put accents on capitals. In the meanwhile good typography practice, consistence in data processing, and pure logic, call for the giving up the bad practice of having a different spelling in upper and lower case. Furthermore, to those who observe well, all the headings of dictionary entries only use capital letters, typically, in the main French dictionaries (now without accents, those words would not be good French spelling and dictionaries are there for this reason, among others). Ask your "relatively authoritative sources" if they ever opened a Larousse or Robert dictionary. If they answer yes, ask them what they observe... (; Alain LaBonté Québec
