Circumflex in French

Sylvius used the circumflex to indicate so-called "false diphthongs". Early modern French as spoken in Sylvius' time had coalesced all its true diphthongs into phonetic monophthongs; that is, a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. He justifies its usage in his work Iacobii Sylvii Ambiani In Linguam Gallicam Isagoge una, cum eiusdem Grammatica Latinogallica ex Hebraeis Graecis et Latinus authoribus (An Introduction to the Gallic (French) Language, And Its Grammar With Regard to Hebrew, Latin and Greek Authors) published by Robert Estienne in 1531. A kind of grammatical survey of French written in Latin, the book relies heavily on the comparison of ancient languages to his contemporary French and explained the specifics of his language. At that time, all linguistic treatises used classical Latin and Greek as their models. Sylvius presents the circumflex in his list of typographic conventions, stating:[1]

${\displaystyle {\hat {a\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {e\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {o\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {oy}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {au}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {eu}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {ou}}}$, diphthongorum notae, ut ${\displaystyle m{\hat {a\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle pl{\hat {e\imath }}n}$, ${\displaystyle m{\hat {o\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle m{\hat {oy}}}$, ${\displaystyle c{\hat {au}}se}$, ${\displaystyle fl{\hat {eu}}r}$, ${\displaystyle p{\hat {ou}}r}$, id est maius, plenus, mihi, mei, causa, flos, pro.

Translation: ${\displaystyle {\hat {a\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {e\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {o\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {oy}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {au}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {eu}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\hat {ou}}}$, are representations of diphthongs, such as ${\displaystyle m{\hat {a\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle pl{\hat {e\imath }}n}$, ${\displaystyle m{\hat {o\imath }}}$, ${\displaystyle m{\hat {oy}}}$, ${\displaystyle c{\hat {au}}se}$, ${\displaystyle fl{\hat {eu}}r}$, ${\displaystyle p{\hat {ou}}r}$, or, in Latin, maius, plenus, mihi, mei, causa, flos, pro.

Sylvius was quite aware that the circumflex was purely a graphical convention. He showed that these diphthongs, even at that time, had been reduced to monophthongs, and used the circumflex to "join" the two letters that had historically been diphthongs into one phoneme. When two adjacent vowels were to be pronounced independently, Sylvius proposed using the diaeresis, called the tréma in French. Sylvius gives the example ${\displaystyle tr{\hat {a\imath }}}$ (French pronunciation: ​[tʁɛ] for je trais) as opposed to ${\displaystyle tr{\ddot {a\imath }}}$ ([tʁa.i] for je trahis). Even these groups, however, did not represent true diphthongs (such as the English try /traɪ/), but rather adjacent vowels pronounced separately without an intervening consonant. As French no longer had any true diphthongs, the diaeresis alone would have sufficed to distinguish between ambiguous vowel pairs. His circumflex was entirely unnecessary. As such the tréma became standardized in French orthography, and Sylvius' circumflex usage never caught on. But the grammarian had pointed out an important orthographical problem of the time.

At that time, the combination eu indicated two different pronunciations:

• /y/ as in sûr and mûr, written seur, meur (or as ${\displaystyle s{\hat {eu}}r}$ and ${\displaystyle m{\hat {eu}}r}$ in Sylvius' work), or
• /œ/ as in cœur and sœur, written by Sylvius not only with a circumflex, but a circumflex topped with a macron: ${\displaystyle {\overset {~_{h}}{c}}{\bar {\hat {eu}}}r}$ and ${\displaystyle s{\bar {\hat {eu}}}r}$ (Sylvius used hc to denote a hard c before e and i).

Sylvius' proposals were never adopted per se, but he opened the door for discussion among French grammarians to improve and disambiguate French orthography.

Étienne Dolet, in his Maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en aultre : d'aduantage de la punctuation de la langue Francoyse, plus des accents d'ycelle (1540),[2] uses the circumflex (this time as a punctuation mark written between two letters) to show three metaplasms:

• 1. Syncope, or the disappearance of an interior syllable, shown by Dolet as: laiˆrra, paiˆra, uraiˆment (vraiˆment), donˆra for laiſſera (laissera), paiera, uraiemẽt (vraiment), donnera. It is worthy of note that before the 14th century, the so-called "mute e" was always pronounced in French as a schwa (/ə/), regardless of position. For example, paiera was pronounced [pɛəra] instead of the modern [pɛra]. In the 14th century, however, this unaccented e began to disappear in hiatus and lose its phonemic status, although it remained in orthography. Some of the syncopes Dolet cites, however, had the mute e reintroduced later: his laiˆrra /lɛra/ is now /lɛsəra/ or /lɛsra/, and donˆra /dɔ̃ra/ is today /dɔnəra/ or /dɔnra/.
• 2. Haplology (the reduction of sequences of identical or similar phonemes): Dolet cites forms which no longer exist: auˆous (avˆous), nˆauous (nˆavous) for auez uous (avez-vous) and n'auez uous (n'avez-vous).
• 3. Contraction of an é followed by a mute e in the feminine plural (pronounced as two syllables in poetry), realized as a long close mid-vowel /eː/. It is important to remember that mute "e" at the end of a word was pronounced as a schwa until the 17th century. Thus penseˆes [pɑ̃seː], ſuborneˆes (suborneˆes) for pensées [pɑ̃seə], subornées. Dolet specifies that the acute accent should be written in noting the contraction. This contraction of two like vowels into one long vowel is also seen in other words, such as aˆage [aːʒə] for aage [aaʒə] (âge).

Thus Dolet uses the circumflex to indicate lost or silent phonemes, one of the uses for which the diacritic is still used today. Although not all his suggested usages were adopted, his work has allowed insight into the historical phonetics of French. Dolet summarized his own contributions with these words: "Ce ſont les preceptions" [préceptes], "que tu garderas quant aux accents de la langue Francoyse. Leſquels auſsi obſerueront tous diligents Imprimeurs : car telles choſes enrichiſſent fort l'impreſsion, & demõſtrent" [démontrent], "que ne faiſons rien par ignorance." Translation: "It is these precepts that you should follow concerning the accents of the French language. All diligent printers should also observe these rules, because such things greatly enrich printing and demonstrate that nothing is left to chance."

The most common phenomenon involving the circumflex relates to /s/ before a consonant. Around the time of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, such post-vocalic /s/ sounds had begun to disappear before hard consonants in many words, being replaced by a compensatory elongation of the preceding vowel, which was maintained into the 18th century.

The silent /s/ remained orthographically for some time, and various attempts were made to distinguish the historical presence graphically, but without much success. Notably, 17th century playwright Pierre Corneille, in printed editions of his plays, used the "long s" (ſ) to indicate silent "s" and the traditional form for the /s/ sound when pronounced (tempeſte, haſte, teſte vs. peste, funeste, chaste).

The circumflex was officially introduced into the 1740 edition of the dictionary of the Académie Française. In more recently introduced neologisms, however, the French lexicon was enriched with Latin-based words which retained their /s/ both in pronunciation and orthography, although the historically evolved word may have let the /s/ drop in favor of a circumflex. Thus, many learned words, or words added to the French vocabulary since then often keep both the pronunciation and the presence of the /s/ from Latin. For example:

• feste (first appearing in 1080) → fête, but:
  • festin: borrowed in the 16th century from the Italian festino,
  • festivité: borrowed from the Latin festivitas in the 19th century, and
  • festival: borrowed from the English festival in the 19th century have all retained their /s/, both written and pronounced. Likewise the related pairs tête/test, fenêtre/défenestrer, bête/bestiaire, etc.

More examples of a disappearing 's' that has been marked with an accent circumflex can be seen in the words below:

• ancêtre "ancestor"
• hôpital "hospital"
• hôtel "hostel"
• forêt "forest"
• rôtir "to roast"
• côte "coast"
• pâté "paste"
• août "August"
• château "castle"
• degoûtant "disgusting"
• fantôme "ghost, phantom" (from Latin phantasma)<fn>The circumflex may come from the ancient s, or perhaps from the au of the older form fantauma, Trésor de la langue française informatisé, s.v.</fn>
• île "isle"
• conquête "conquest"
• tempête "tempest"
• bâtard "bastard"
• bête "beast"
• Pâques "Pascha" (old name for Easter, from Latin pasca)
• Pentecôte "Pentecost"

The circumflex also serves as a vestige of other lost letters, particularly letters in hiatus where two vowels have contracted into one phoneme, such as aage → âge; baailler → bâiller, etc.

Likewise, the former medieval diphthong "eu" when pronounced /y/ would often, in the 18th century, take a circumflex in order to distinguish homophones, such as deu → dû (from devoir vs. du = de + le); creu → crû (from croître vs. cru from croire) ; seur → sûr (the adjective vs. the preposition sur), etc.

• cruement → crûment;
• meur → mûr.