Editing Reforms of French orthography (section)

{{Short description|History of reform efforts in French orthography}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2020}}

{{Expand French|date=January 2022}}{{French language}}
[[French orthography]] was already (more or less) fixed and, from a [[Phonology|phonological]] point of view, outdated when its [[lexicography]] developed in the late 17th century and the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}} was mandated to establish an "official" [[Prescription and description|prescriptive norm]]. Still, there was already much debate at the time opposing the tenets of a traditional, [[etymological]] [[orthography]], and supporting those of a [[Spelling reform|reformed]], phonological [[Transcription (linguistics)|transcription]] of the language.

[[César-Pierre Richelet]] chose the latter (reformed) option when he published the first monolingual French [[dictionary]] in 1680, but the {{lang|fr|Académie}} chose to adhere firmly to tradition in the first edition of [[Dictionnaire de l'Académie française|its dictionary]] (1694).

Various other attempts at simplification followed, culminating in the "rectifications" of 6 December 1990.<ref name="academie" /> Further, more radical proposals also exist to simplify the existing writing system,<ref>Examples of proposals include:{{Primary source inline|date=September 2022|reason=To demonstrate notability}}

* [http://fonetik.fr/index-en.html Fonétik] {{in lang|fr}}
* [http://sites.google.com/site/ortofasil/ Ortofasil] {{in lang|fr}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20071123015620/http://www.alfograf.net/ortograf/ Altograf] {{in lang|fr}}
* [http://ortograf.net/ Ortograf] {{in lang|fr}}</ref> but these have failed to gather much interest to date.