French orthography on the Internet

Randy Presuhn randy_presuhn at mindspring.com
Tue Sep 23 22:33:22 CEST 2008


Hi -

> From: "Mark Crispin" <markrcrispin at live.com>
> To: "Stephane Bortzmeyer" <bortzmeyer at nic.fr>; "Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>
> Cc: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1:17 PM
> Subject: RE: French orthography on the Internet
...
> I am not a Francophone, so I do not know if a letter without a diacritical is
> merely an unaccented form of the same letter, or if it actually changes the
> letter.  I believe that in some Scandinavian languages, U+00F8 is a
> completely different letter from U+006F.

I think the "same letter" question misses the real point.  For example,
depending on the accent markings, "peche" can mean "peach," 
"fishing," or "sin."  The accent markings do generally reflect
differences in pronunciation or etymology, and account for
minimal pairs that would otherwise require significant
context to disambiguate in written form.

> If, however, "unaccented French" is becoming a separate orthography
> that French people choose to use even when writing with a pen, I think
> that it may be worth a registration.

Let's not worry about that until someone actually finds they have a need
for it, and cares enough to submit a registration request.  This list already
has too much of a tendency to spend time finding solutions to propblems
no one has asked us to address.

Randy



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