Here's the good news for those who remember struggling through dictation in French class: French spelling has been simplified. Here's the bad news: Few have noticed, and those who have don't like it.

 

Even the Academie Francaise itself has chosen to include only some of the new spellings at the end of its dictionary explaining that it would like to wait it out and see which spellings are adopted in general usage before giving its official ...

For example, "aout" (August) drops the pointy circumflex accent over the "u''. "Baby-sitter" gets Frenchified into "babysitteur." Bonhomie, which has come into English with that spelling, becomes bonhommie — to reflect its root "homme" (man).

Both the new and old spellings remain acceptable, but the new ones are supposed to be taught in schools, so they will eventually — in theory — replace the old.

...the changes are hardly intrusive: In a typical novel, there would be about one change per page — and many of them as small as a change of accent.
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