A 14:01 98-07-16 -0700, Nelson H. F. Beebe a écrit :
>Keld J{\o}rn Simonsen writes:
>
>>> Yes, some French maintain that the uppercase version of lowercase
>>> accented letters do not have accents.
>
>That is traditional in the French in France, but not in the French in
>Canada, where accents are preserved in uppercase letters.
[Alain] :
Tradition has varied both in France and in Canada (depending on the school
you went to), and the two camps has been competing in both countries for
centuries. However there is no longer any controversy about this in Canada,
and it is also vanishing in France... (in the sense that, as says the
typographical bible in France : "L'accent a, en français, pleine valeur
orthographique" [i.e. "Accents have, in French, full spelling value"] and
that one must object to the discussable practice to remove them on capital
letters.
All dictionaries, as said in a previous article, always showed their
entries in major France's French dictionaries in capitals only... I am
always tempted to say that those who say that accents are not reuqired on
capitals ever opened a dictionary (they would immediately have seen the
contradiction with their faith, due to primary school brain-washing -- in a
period where teachers had no choice, otherwise the contradition would have
been with the very high technology of mechanical typerwiting machines (; ).
[Nelson] :
>At a conference I attended in Paris a few years ago, a French
>typographer reported that the dropping of accents in uppersased words
>often led to confusion, citing <<Congr{\`e}s de D{\'e}putes>> ->
><<CONGRES DE DEPUTES>>, which is pronounced entirely differently.
[Alain] :
I collect such examples... Thanks for this one. It is not only a matter of
pronunciation, "congrès de députés" means "congress of members of
parliament [MP]", "congres de députés" means "eels of MPs", congrès de
députes" almost suggest a congress of prostitutes if you listen
distractively...
One that is not theoretical is the ancient spelling of "PALAIS DES CONGRES"
in Paris (Palace of eels). In 1990, between two visits they added big
aluminium grave accents on all occurences of the phrase, to have a less
hilarious "PALAIS DES CONGRÈS" (Convention center).
Alain LaBonté
Québec
______________________________________________________________________
>Jacques Andr{\'e} has also argued for accent preservation; a relevant
>reference may be this article:
>
>@String{j-GUTENBERG = "Cahiers GUTenberg"}
>
>@Article{Andre:CG-6-42,
> author = "J. Andr{\'e} and J. Grimault",
> title = "Le{\c{c}}ons de microtypographie~: 1--emploi des
> capitales (premi{\`e}re partie)",
> journal = j-GUTENBERG,
> year = "1990",
> volume = "6",
> pages = "42--50",
> month = "juillet",
>}
>
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