Re:France Gives in to the Hashtag
by stdbrouw on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @11:12AM
(#9304241)
Isn't this just the linguistic equivalent of micro-optimization, though? There's tons of grammatical (e.g. differences in the subjunctive between verbs that use the auxiliary etre or avoir) and spelling oddities (le hanche but l'hôtel) in French, but, thank the lord, at least they've been able to keep "formage" from being an accepted alternative spelling of "fromage"!
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If spelling didn't negatively affect schooling and careers, I would somewhat agree with you.
The problem would still be there for meanings. Who deicide the meaning of a word in a given context when it has become ambivalent (e.g.: biweekly)?
In many languages, including French, sometimes the past and present tense sound the same and are even spelled the same. The world hasn't exploded yet. People figure out ways to get their meaning across.
Also, dictionaries based on accepted usage (ask ten random native speakers whether they consider spelling ___ to be acceptable) give most of the advantages of dictionaries based on dictate (what the academy thinks).