2016 French Orthographic Reform

About

The 2016 French Orthograhic Reform refers to the announcement by the French government of a 26-year-old orthographic law meant to simplify the spelling usage of over 2 400 French words, including changes applied to the use of the circumflex, and set to take effect for grade schoolers during the start of school year in September 2016. Following the announcement made in late January 2016, many French netizens reacted to a potential oversimplification of the French language with various hashtags and parodies.

Context

In 1990, an orthographic law was passed in France, in accordance with the Académie Française, concerning over 2 400 words that needed spelling correction and adaptation to a more recent usage^[1]. Though passed, no official enforcement of the law had been made for roughly 26 years.
On January 29th 2016, TF1's news channel affiliate LCI issued an article about the reform being officially set to take effect on the start of school year 2016^[2]. The report segment was also broadcasted on national television (shown below).

Among over 2 400 words being affected by the change, 10 of them, the most used, stood out (shown below):

Spread

Following the announcement, every French news outlet dedicated an headline to the reform (examples with Le Figaro^[5] and Le Nouvel Obs^[6])

#JeSuisCirconflexe

At the same time, a massive outcry gained Twitter, under the hashtag #ReformeOrthographe^[3], many criticizing the decision by claiming that it may result in a "bastardization" of the French language. Soon after, the hashtag #JeSuisCirconflexe began trending as well. Inspired by the Je Suis Charlie slogan, it was used to call out a perceived removal of the diacritic circumflex from the entire language^[4].

Debunkery

As public outcry persisted on Twitter, new outlets (such as Le Monde^[7] for intsance) published follow-up articles, as soon as February 4th, clearing things up about the reform and especially debunking the claim concerning the removal of the circumflex while offering backstories on the words being changed for good. It was also revealed that the reform had already been applied in school manuals since 2008.

Various Examples

[WIP]

Search Interest

As shown by the graph below, searches for "accent circonflexe" (French for circumflex) skyrocketed following the event.

External References