Talk:Circumflex in French

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First instances of the modern usage

I've been trying to find out when circumflexes were first used for the modern reason, to indicate and s or more rarely another elided letter. I've found a 1556 example of fâcher, instead of fascher. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:45, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some slightly earlier examples from the first works of Ronsard (1550): âpre, âge, ôtant. Note that elsewhere in the same texts, he uses tempeste, teste, aspre, oter (with no accent), etc., and he addresses this inconsistency explicitly in an Avertissement au lecteur:

Et ſi tu m’accuſes d’estre trop inconſtant en l’orthographe de ce liure, écrivant maintenant espée, épée, accorder, acorder, uétu, ueſtu, espandre, épandre, blaſmer, blâmer, tu t’en dois collererer contre toi mémes, qui me fais eſtre ainſi […]

CapnPrep (talk) 22:03, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]