Abstract
THIS is an excellent and useful little pamphlet, in which the author claims to have discovered and formulated for the first time the laws which regulate French accentuation. Putting aside the tonic accent which usually falls on the last syllable of a word, and corresponds with the toned syllable of the Latin or Italic original, we have three accents: the acute, the grave, and the circumflex, which Mr. Keane terms respectively the euphonic, the grammatical, and the historical. The ciicumflex denotes the loss of a sound, as do also the acute when on initial e, and the grave when on final e. The grave is alone employed grammatically to indicate the grammatical changes of words, and Mr. Keane lays down the two rules that “e followed by grammatical e mute, one consonant intervening, takes the grave accent,” and that” every unaccented e followed by one consonant not final is mute.” Mr. Keane shows himself well acquainted with the latest philological researches into the French language, and both pupil and teacher will find great assistance from his attempt to introduce law and order into the nature and position of the French accents. However, he is not altogether the first in the field, and it must be remembered that the philological ignorance of those who have stereotyped the use of the accents has caused it to be somewhat arbitrary. The Neufchatel Bible of 1535 has no accents, and the first to employ them regularly, though somewhat capriciously, was Jacques Dubois, in the sixteenth century. In “An Introductorie for to Learn French trewly,” published by Du Guez, in London, probably about 1560, the accents are written below the line.
French Accent.
A. H.
Keane
By. (Asher and Co., 1877.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
French Accent . Nature 15, 396 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/015396a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015396a0