Review this sentence for me thanx

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Permalink Reply by Frank on January 20, 2010 at 10:28pm

Almost perfect :)

However : qu'elle n'a pas le temps pour s'asseoir
should be either:

qu'elle n'a pas de temps pour s'assoir
or
qu'elle n'a pas le temps de s'assoir.

The former a slightly more formal than the later.

(btw asseoir is okay, but it's the old fashioned (pre-1990) way of writing this verb).

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on January 20, 2010 at 11:43pm

Frank -- I think "old-fashioned" is a bit unfair. The vast vast vast vast majority of French writing still uses the "old" spellings. The new ones (even though the original proposal does date back to 1990) have really not taken off yet.

There has recently been something of an attempted revival on the part of the French government, it's true, but it's really got some way to go I think before we can start talking about the pre-reform spellings as "old-fashioned"! For example, most dictionaries are only just in the last couple of years starting to include the new spellings, and even then, they're just mentioning them as alternatives secondary to the "old" spelling. (Larousse's wording for example is "Dans le cadre de l'orthographe rectifiée, on peut écrire...")

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Permalink Reply by Frank on January 21, 2010 at 12:32am

You're right mentioning that although the proposal dates back to 1990, most people didn't catch up. The old spelling is still alive and kicking, and using it isn't a mistake per se (and it doesn't lead to confusion, so who the fuck cares).
However, the "new" spelling is what children are now learning at school, thus the old one is bound to decline (if future generations ever care about spelling, which is far from certain).
It's why I tend to encourage people learning the language to focus on the new one, just like I wouldn't recommend Internet Explorer 6 to anyone nowadays although it's still (alas) widely used.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on January 21, 2010 at 7:05am

I suppose the "old" spelling will *probably* decline, but how quickly does depend on a couple of factors:

- for now, learners of the new spellings are still predominantly working with dictionaries and other aids that really prioritise the old spellings even if they do mention the new ones
- most real-world writing still uses the pre-1990 spellings, and the pronouncements of Mlle Chardon probably aren't the only input that people use in learning to read and write-- despite the selective exposure that the Government might want, most learners are still exposed to a mixture of old and new spellings
- irrespectively of what spelling they learnt at school, people going into professional writing may well find that they have to adopt whatever spelling their company/publisher dictates as their house style-- so it depends a bit on how quickly or what motivations there are for such policies to change (I don't see many publishers adopting the new spelling right now...)
- in some types of day-to-day writing, the spelling people adopt is whatever Microsft Word adopts on their behalf
- there are of course some media where the typical spelling is neither the "old" or the "new" (yet does have other conventions)

Another problem is that material for foreign learners has been even slower at taking note of the spelling reform, and has done so inconsistently. Just as an example, the Correct Your French Blunders book (which in general I would recommend as offering fairly "practical" advice even if it's not very technically oriented) does mention the 1990 spelling reform. But then later in the book the author decries forms such as je jète (advocated in the reform) as "blunders"!

Many other commonly used grammrs, vocabulary guides etc still have the old spellings. The latest editions of the major bilingual dictionaries are starting to pay some kind of lip service to the spelling reform, but are still not giving the reformed spellings equal (and certaintly not predominant) coverage.

It will be very interesting to see how things develop, but I certainly don't see the new spellings about to oust the old ones just yet...!

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