Circumflex in French

The circumflex (ˆ) is one of the five diacritics used in French orthography. It may appear on the vowels a, e, i, o, and u, for example â in pâté. The circumflex, called accent circonflexe, has three primary functions in French: It affects the pronunciation of a, e, and o. Although it is used on i and u as well, it does not affect their pronunciation. It often indicates the historical presence of a letter, commonly s, that has become silent and fallen away in orthography over the course of linguistic evolution. It is used, less frequently, to distinguish between two homophones. For example, sur ('on/about') versus sûr '(sure/safe'), and du ('of the') versus dû ('had to') And in certain words, it is simply an orthographic convention. The circumflex first appeared in written French in the 16th century. It was borrowed from Ancient Greek, and combines the acute accent and the grave accent. Grammarian Jacques Dubois (known as Sylvius) is the first writer known to have used the Greek symbol in his writing (although he wrote in Latin). Several grammarians of the French Renaissance attempted to prescribe a precise usage for the diacritic in their treatises on language. The modern usage of the circumflex accent became standardized in the 18th or 19th century. 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.