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ArchivesRe: Clementine curiousity
in reply to a message by Mel_13
In French, Clémentine (and Clémence, Clément...) has an accent over the first syllable, as a given name or as a noun (clémentine). In this case, BtN is wrong and your teacher is right (which makes sense since it is a teacher of French language).
The BtN entry should be "Clementine. Gender: Feminine. Usage: English. English form of CLÉMENTINE." and "Clémentine. Gender: Feminine. Usage: French. French feminine form of CLÉMENT.", with the correct pronunciation, with the first vowel [e] and not [ə].
In French (and the same is true for Spanish or Catalan) the use of the accents doesn't depend on the taste of the speaker, but on the rules and fixed spellings (because of etymology, tradition...) by the language academy (in this case, the Académie française); that is true for common words and for given names. In the case of given names that match nouns or adjectives, checking the correct spelling is very simple, as in Clémentine, because they appear in the dictionary. In the case of other given names the way is look up some reliable works (as the Larousse encyclopaedia and dictionaries, Dauzat's works...) or ask directly the Académie.
Regarding that on Internet the name/nous appears used both with and without accent, a lot of French speakers (and again, that is true for speakers in any language with strong spelling rules, as Spanish or Catalan) make mispellings because of a poor linguistic knowledge, other are lazy and even knowing how to spell a word write without accents or other diacritics and, finally, other very competent speakers, when dealing on Internet or in English contexts, simply drop the accents and diacritics because otherwise the text can appear with odd symbols or be incomprehensible in some browsers or the name/word finishes distorted or is not understood by the English speakers.
Lumia
http://onomastica.mailcatala.com
The BtN entry should be "Clementine. Gender: Feminine. Usage: English. English form of CLÉMENTINE." and "Clémentine. Gender: Feminine. Usage: French. French feminine form of CLÉMENT.", with the correct pronunciation, with the first vowel [e] and not [ə].
In French (and the same is true for Spanish or Catalan) the use of the accents doesn't depend on the taste of the speaker, but on the rules and fixed spellings (because of etymology, tradition...) by the language academy (in this case, the Académie française); that is true for common words and for given names. In the case of given names that match nouns or adjectives, checking the correct spelling is very simple, as in Clémentine, because they appear in the dictionary. In the case of other given names the way is look up some reliable works (as the Larousse encyclopaedia and dictionaries, Dauzat's works...) or ask directly the Académie.
Regarding that on Internet the name/nous appears used both with and without accent, a lot of French speakers (and again, that is true for speakers in any language with strong spelling rules, as Spanish or Catalan) make mispellings because of a poor linguistic knowledge, other are lazy and even knowing how to spell a word write without accents or other diacritics and, finally, other very competent speakers, when dealing on Internet or in English contexts, simply drop the accents and diacritics because otherwise the text can appear with odd symbols or be incomprehensible in some browsers or the name/word finishes distorted or is not understood by the English speakers.
Lumia
http://onomastica.mailcatala.com
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