Was there ever a time when French language was pronounced as it is spelled?

Question

How is that they ended up with that spelling?

Does anybody know if there is some kind of proposal for a spelling reform?

Answer 1

Yes and no. Most of the strange features of French spelling do reflect old (sometimes very old features). For example, the silent final -e and all the silent final consonant (e.g., the -s of Paris, -d of grand, and so on) are indeed historical survivals. The "hat" over some vowels reflects an 's' that has been lost. But periodic reforms have resulted in created an anachronistic system which does not reflect the history quite accurately. For example, not all words that should have a circumflex reflecting an older 's' have it anymore. By the way, this answer applies to all languages with very complex spelling, like English, Danish, and so on. F.e., in English, the difference between 'ea' in words like 'meat' and the 'ee' of words like 'meet' corresponds to a distinction in vowels that was once quite real. In all cases much of the complexity reflects older pronunciation but it is never, to my knowledge, quite consistent.

Answer 2

As far as I remember it was never pronounced as it was spelled because French is a mix of Gaulish, Latin, Norman, a Scandinavian dialect brought by the Norse who settled in Normandy; and the language of the Franks, a Germanic tribe. Of course, it is rather hard to trace all these in contemporary French but one of the most salient features is its characteristic pronunciation, which, if memory doesn't deceive me, was applied almost simultaneously with the process of change from Old to Middle English. It is there were you can trace a pronunciation which is closer to the French one of the time (this being sometime around 1066 DC onwards)
French has suffered numerous changes through time, as every other language has. I ignore if there are going to be any reforms as to spelling but I do know that certain structures are changing eg. the negative structure "ne-pas" is being clipped. unfortunately I don't rem,ember if it is the 2ne" or the "pas" that people are dropping these days, I think it's the "ne" as in
"Ce n'est pas possible" being changed to "Ce est pas possible"
I hope I've been of some help to you.
Good luck!

Answer 3

Every language could benefit tremendously by spelling reforms.
English saying:
"We say Manchester but we spell it Liverpool"
Unfortunately reforms are so costly, requires so much money, that no Government will do it in any country.
It is all about money, Dude, as always...

Answer 4

The French probably do think it's pronounced as it's spelled!
Why isn't Phonetically spelled phonetically?

Answer 5

If you ll ask french people they will tell you that french is pronounced as it is spelled
and english is not pronounced as it is spelled
They will tell you that french is phonetic language and english is not

Answer 6

Not many languages can be spelled as they sound due to different dialects in themselves!