18th Century
- L'Académie s'eſt donc vûe contrainte à faire dans cette nouvelle Edition, à ſon orthographe, pluſieurs changemens qu'elle n'avoit point jugé à propos d'adopter, lorſqu'elle donna l'Edition précédente. — Académie, 1740, using accents for the first time
The third (1740) and fourth (1762) editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive ones, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether.
Accents, which had been in common use by printers for a long time, were finally adopted by the Académie, and many mute consonants were dropped.
- estre → être (to be)
- monachal → monacal (monastic)
Many changes suggested in the fourth edition were later abandoned along with thousands of neologisms added to it.
Very importantly too, subsequent 18th century editions of the dictionary added the letters J and V to the French alphabet in replacement of consonant I and U, fixing many cases of homography.
- uil → vil (vile)
Read more about this topic: Reforms Of French Orthography
Famous quotes containing the word century:
“In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It’s the drowning out of false voices.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)