I talk about it here regularly: the spelling of the French language is to logic what the Sahara is to the temperate climate. The sparkling columnist of RTL Muriel Gilbert (“A candy on the tongue“) demonstrates this with humor in his recent Dictionary of errors… that have entered our dictionaries (1). In fact, in many cases, forms that were initially “errors” have indeed become the norm and, as such, are now clearly listed in reference works. Here are some examples:
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Spelling. Let’s start with the most symbolic of these errors, which concerns the word “orthography” itself! Like geography, astronomy or biology, the “science” of writing should indeed be called “orthographie” and the term “orthography” should be reserved for its experts. This is so true that “orthography” did indeed exist, before losing its “i” in the 16th century. Which does not prevent it from having as a derivative “orthographier”, with the reappearance of that famous “i” in passing. Logical, I tell you!
Welcome. This is one of the puzzles we all stumbled upon when we were schoolchildren. Why is “accueil” written “ueil” when it is pronounced “euil”, like “fauteuil”, “deuil”, or “écureuil” which do indeed end in “euil”?
Answer? Because of this other rule according to which the “c” is pronounced [se] before an “e”, as in “ce”, “cep” or “cercle”. In other words: if we wrote “acceuil”, we would have to pronounce [acseuil] ! So it was decided to reverse the letters “e” and “u” to arrive at the sound [k]. A convention that applies to “reception”, therefore, but also to “coffin” and “collection”. In this specific case, we have in some way created an error to avoid another one…
Syrup-sip. Why does the verb “siroter” take a “t” while “syrup” ends in a “p”? Because we made a mistake, of course! It was the crusaders who, in the Middle Ages, brought back this drink that the Orientals called sarab (“potion”, in Arabic medicine). The term, cheerfully distorted, has become syrup in medieval Latin and “sirop” in French. So far, so good. It was only in the 17th century that things got complicated. Probably because of the attraction to the pairs “tricot/tricoter”, “complot/comploter”, “mégot/mégoter”, “siroter” appeared, with the meaning of “to drink a little while savoring”. Let’s dare a hypothesis: perhaps the culprits had not only sipped fruit juices…
Nightmare/nightmare. What would the French language be without its exceptions? Here is one that is worth a look. “Bavarder” comes from “bavard”; “cafarder” comes from “cafard”; “canarder” comes from “canard” and all these verbs logically take a “d”. But in this case, why doesn’t “cauchemar” have one when the verb to which it is linked is “cauchemar”?der” ?
To understand this, we actually have to reverse the question and ask ourselves why we don’t use “cauchemarer”? This spelling would indeed be more than rational since the end of “cauchemar” comes from a Picard term, sea (“ghost causing bad dreams”). Reason why this word was written nightmare until the 17th century and had the adjective nightmarish until the end of the 19th century. In fact, it was probably through alignment with “bavarder” that “cauchemarder” was created in 1840.
Run should logically take two “r”s and not just because we have two legs. This verb is in fact derived from Latin curse (“to move”), which had evolved into running in the Middle Ages, as specified in the Historical dictionary of the French language. It should also be noted that this form has been maintained in the fixed expression “chasse à courre”. And that our Belgian friends still describe their difficult steps as “courreries”.
Overweight. In the not-so-bad-for-you genre, I really like “embonpoint” and I’ll explain. We all know that the letter “n” is replaced by an “m” in front of an “m”, a “b” and a “p”. “EMmener”, “treMbler”, chaMpignon” and so on. This is what the young people of 2024 call the “Mbappé rule”: an excellent mnemonic device!!!
But I come back to my “embonpoint” (not mine, mind you, the one in the dictionary!). It does take an “m” before the “b”, but… not before the “p”. Why? Muriel Gilbert explains it to us: “embonpoint” comes from the fusion of “en bon point” (in three words), a noun phrase which had the meaning “in good condition”. Moreover, it was written for a time eMboMpoint, in accordance with the rule. It was clearly too simple! The Académie française, in 1694, decided to modify its spelling to recall the origin of the word, but it only did so halfway, by restoring the “n” of “bon”, but not that of “en”.
Enough to earn a bad mark, right?
(1) Little Gilbert. Dictionary of errors… which have entered our dictionaries, by Muriel Gilbert. Editions Buchet-Chastel. In bookstores from September 19.
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