Читать книгу Geofroy Tory. Painter and engraver; first royal printer; reformer of orthography and typography under François I онлайн

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Tory did not content himself with setting forth the state of things existent in his day: he suggested improvements, almost all of which have been sanctioned by usage. For instance, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the pronunciation was very difficult to grasp for lack of accents; he proposed to supply them. 'In our French language,' he says, 'we have no symbol of accent in writing, and it is on account of this lack that our language is not yet established nor submitted to fixed rules, like the Hebrew, Greek and Latin. I would like that it should be, as might well be done.... In French,' he says farther on, 'as I have said, we do not write the accent over O vocative, but pronounce it full, as when we say:

'O pain du ciel angelique,

Tu es nostre salut antique.

'In this lack of accent we have an imperfection, which we ought to remedy by purifying and subjecting to fixed rule and art our language, which is the most graceful language known.'[83] Elsewhere he suggests replacing elided letters by an apostrophe, which had not then been done in French. 'I say and allege these things in this place to the end that if it should happen that one had to write in antique letters verses where the S must disappear, one may write them honestly and purposely without using the said letter, ... and place a hooked point over the place where it should be.'[84] In another place he emphasizes the necessity of the cedilla, which we find in French manuscripts from the thirteenth century, but which typography had not as yet adopted. 'C before O,' he says, 'in French pronunciation and language, is sometimes hard, as in saying "coquin," "coq," "coquillard"; sometimes it is soft, as in saying "garcon," "macon," "françois," and other like words.'[85]