Conference thebay::joyoflex

    My terminal is way ahead of the French government.  So is our LN03
    printer.  Whenever they see an accented character, copyright sign,
    or various other funny characters that you guys sometimes use in
    quoting other articles, this is what happens:
    -  The funny character gets eaten
    -  The good character following the funny character gets eaten
    -  The terminal stalls 5 seconds (this is APITA)
    -  A double-sized box with an X through it appears.
    And if you guys keep doing this, I'm going to post some Kanji, in
    hopes that it returns the favor.
    (Oh, I'm not sure how long the LN03 printer stalls before printing
    the boxes.  Sometimes when it sits there for minutes before a page
    appears, we assume that the DECservers are up to their usual tricks.)

	The reform is promoted by l'Acad�mie Fran�aise and by
	the government. 

	It was announced in a press conference by the Prime Minister 
	Michel Rocard, the Minister of Francophony Alain Decaux, the 
	Secr�taire Perp�tuel de l'Acad�mie Maurice Druon, and last
	but not least Bernard Pivot, the famous organizer of the 
	Championnats d'Orthographe.
	
	The goal is to make the language easier to learn by removing
	some of the most obscure difficulties. Only spelling is concerned 
	(no changes to syntax), and for a limited number of words; in 
	that sense it's a minor reform.
	
	Some examples:

		o  Bonhomie will be spelt bonhommie (with double M,
		as in homme, bonhomme)

		o  Charrette will be spelt charette (with one R,
		as in chariot -- seems like the double R resulted 
		from a transcription mistake by some irresponsible 
		monk a few centuries ago)

		o  Rules for making the plural of composed words
		are simplified. Today, these rules are rather complex,
		to the point that only trained specialists would do it
		without a dictionary. 
		Now you just put an S at the end of each terms. For	
		example, the plural of apr�s-midi will be apr�s-midis
		(instead of apr�s-midi)

		o  The accents will stay; only the circumflex on
		 I and U will be suppressed for a number of words.

		 No more vo�te, but voute (comments was made that
		 without the ^, a vo�te will obviously collapse).

		 No more s'il vous pla�t, s'il vous plait.
		
		 � is not threatened (from what I've heard) so
		 we'll still enjoy fen�tre, t�te etc...

		o And a few other similar changes
		

	The reform was submitted to all concerned parties, including
	governments of countries that have French as an official language
	(Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Algeria, Cameroon etc...).
		
	However, the Soci�t� des Agr�g�s, an influent association of
	teachers, said that such a reform would be criminal and they'll 
	fight it to death. They reckon 3000 words are affected.

	The plan is to have an interim period (2 years) in which 
	both old and new rules are valid in the dictionaries and 
	official documents. Later on, only the new rules will apply
	and will be taught in schools.

	roger	

Roger

Many thanks for your learned and lucid explanation.  My French teacher was
disgusted with the idea of doing away with the ^ as well.  I thought it was used
to indicate the loss of an 's', which makes it useful for comparison with other
similar languages.

H�pital - Hospital - Ospedali
H�tel - Hostel (ry) - ?
H�te - Haste - ?
(sorry Italian lacking)
I suspect it may only apply with 'a' and 'o' which may explain why they want to
keep '�' and '�'........

    	No, it means a lost "s" in other places too.
    f�te	feast	(English)
    fen�tre	fenster	(German)
    �tre	esse	(my Latin is rusty)

	re .-1

	Ah but, French f�te and English feast, French fen�tre and German
	Fenster all come from the same place :) 
 
	French "f�te" and English "feast" both derive 
	from Latin "festa".
	The S that got replaced by ^ in French, survived in English
	(and also in Fr festivit�, festival etc...)

	French "fen�tre" and German "Fenster" both come from Latin
	"fenestra".
	The S missing from la fen�tre is still in dem Fenster (also
	in the French d�fenestration)

	You're right that in general ^ is there to replace an 
	etymological S. 
	In some cases it serves as a grammatical discriminant,
	eg between the past indicative (il aima, elle fut) and 
	the past subjunctive (qu'elle aim�t, qu'il f�t.)
	
	roger			

    May your terminals melt.
    
    -- ����������
    (It's katakana, not kanji, because my name isn't Japanese.
    Nonetheless, here's hoping it provides revenge for all those
    5-second delays and square boxes with X's through them.)

    And I bet I know who's most in favour of it: the dictionary publishers.

    Just when I'm trying to learn the language, they change it!  Why don't
    they remove some irregularities in the grammar - that would really
    be useful!

    Martin.

    Re: .7
    
    In the fullness of time: about another century or so. When you have a
    language that is already perfect, you have to be extremely careful with
    changes.
    
    "The French don't care what they say, actually, as long as they
    pronounce it properly."
    
    					Henry Higgins

    Re: .-1
    
    
>    "The French don't care what they say, actually, as long as they
>    pronounce it properly."          ^
				      |    
    				      |	Henry Higgins
				      |
				      |
 Isn't it "do", not "say"?  -----------

 "Just you wait!"

Larry

    Re: .9
    
    Err, uhmm, <blush, blush>
    
    Modifying a quotation to make it fit the context better is OK as long
    as you don't get caught at it.

Hmmm, nobody seems to have pointed out that the katakana in .6 comes out (at 
least on my kit as mostly Yen signs.  At least that shows that it's Japanese!

Jon

    None of them were yen signs.
    
    The usual sign for yen (ASCII-sized character,
    looking like a Y with an = through it) is:  \
    It has the same character code as backslash has in
    ASCII, so guess how it looks on a U.S. terminal.
    
    The same sign, as a wide character (Kanji-sized, but still
    looking like a Y with an = through it) is:  ��
    I don't know how this will look on a U.S. terminal.
    
    The real character for yen (actual Kanji) is:  ��
    I don't know how this will look on a U.S. terminal either.
    (But here's hoping that some of you will have to wait hours for
    your terminals to display a box with an X through it, so I can
    get revenge for all the times you've been doing it to me!)

>    The same sign, as a wide character (Kanji-sized, but still
>    looking like a Y with an = through it) is:  ��
>    I don't know how this will look on a U.S. terminal.

It looks like a Spanish inverted exclamation mark followed by an i diaeresis
(two-dots).
   
>    The real character for yen (actual Kanji) is:  ��
>    I don't know how this will look on a U.S. terminal either.

It looks like a plus/minus sign (a plus sitting on top of a minus) followed
by a German scharfes s (looks like a Greek beta).

>    (But here's hoping that some of you will have to wait hours for
>    your terminals to display a box with an X through it, so I can
>    get revenge for all the times you've been doing it to me!)

I hate to disappoint, but it doesn't disrupt my terminal at all. Now if
you're really looking for someone to blame when you're terminal gets upset
by all these funny European characters, ...

Ian

  Not sure whether anyone cares but what we are seeing is the collision
  of the Far Eastern variable-byte� character sets with the ISO Latin-1
  character set (which is almost the same as the DEC multinational
  character set).

  In a variable-byte character set, a character might be composed of
  one or two bytes.  Therefore the software has to examine each byte 
  to see whether its value makes it a one-byte character or the first
  byte of a two-byte character.  Only after the character boundaries
  have been determined can the character be displayed.

  In contrast, most Western software is quite sure that a character is
  exactly one byte long.  So it will happily display what is really a 
  katakana two-byte character as two separate ISO Latin-1 one-byte 
  characters.

  A discussion of character sets is almost guaranteed to cause serious
  eye-glazing in the audience.  If you haven't already learned more than
  you ever wanted to know about the subject, see DELNI::WORLDWIDE.

  JP

  �This disregards the older issues of 7-bit vs. 8-bit characters.
   Character sets discussions often use the term "octet" rather than
   byte, just to ensure that everyone knows we are talking about 8-bit
   bytes.

    	Just to further confuse the issue, "octet" seems to be the *only*
    word the French have for "byte". I am sure I have seen a reference to a
    7 bit "octet"   :-)