While I certainly agree that role with an accent is all but non-existent in common English, I can warrant that it still has a foothold in theology, philosophy, and, most annoyingly (to me), the theatre; so its use is not confined to mathematics. Micah On 10/10/07, Peter Selinger <selinger@mathstat.dal.ca> wrote:
Micah Blake McCurdy wrote:
Hallo!
The most common source of the circumflex accent in French is mediaeval scribes saving space, typically by the (stylised) writing of an s over a vowel near where it was omitted. This is most sensible in french since
letter s is very rarely vocalised. For instance, "hospital" becomes "hopital", "forest" becomes "foret" and "hostel" becomes "hotel". It's worth noting that all of these words, and many other french loan-words in english, were borrowed _before_ their changes in french. For instance, the name of the accent in question was "circumflex", it was adopted into english
the like
this, but then the french word changed (along with many, many others) to "circonflex" where it is now. Also in this vein is the old french "comptroller", which still exists (barely) in english, but the french have very long ago changed to "controller", one of the few cases that spring to my mind where the english word changed _with_ the french word instead of keeping the loan-word in it's original form -- the only other case which
I knew that. I think the word comptroller/control actually did not change with the French, but instead it entered the English language twice, at two different times. The same is true e.g. of warranty vs. guarantee.
springs to mind is "metre" and "colour" and "honour" and whatnot, where the UK changed their spellings under french influence but the americans maintained the older english loan-forms "meter", "color", and "honor", etc.
Actually, the latter two are Latin words, spelled the same way since long before English entered the picture. "Meter", on the other hand, is derived from "metrum", so metre is indeed the more traditional spelling.
Curiously, some other Latin words, like "professor", were defaced similarly by the French, but the English did not follow suit. I think this is generally true of "action" words (aggressor, monitor, mentor...).
However! The circumflex on role is not of this type. It is of the less common type which is used to distinguish between cases. For instance, some (now definitely archaic, as defined by the acadamie) old french grammars specify a distinction between "vo^tre" and "votre", as well as a parallel distinction between "no^tre" and "notre", the former meaning "yours" as in "that book is yours" ("ce livre et le vo^tre") and the latter meaning "your", as in "your book is on the table" (votre livre est sur le table). Furthermore, "roll" as a verb is also a french word (now changed to "a rouler", but originally "a roller" and before that "a roler") and, although the noun and verb are etymologically distinct, a similar semantic diference separates the use as a terminal noun-phrase, as in "this is your role" ("c,a c'est ta ro^le") from the verb form.
Interesting. I did not know this.
While the _spellings_ with the accents are well on their way out, the accents do change the pronunciation; and the "votre/notre" examples show it still in daily usage, where the form translated as "yours" is voiced with the "o" as in "Oh my!" and the form translated as "your" is voiced with the "o" as in "cot". In English, among the most insufferable pedants of the theatrical school, you will still hear making vocalised distinctions between "ro^le" (with the "o" as in "Oh my!") meaning a part to play, and a roll, as in, a good roll in the hay.
The accents have persisted (along with the ligatures oe and ae, which I support, hence my (archaic) spelling of mediaeval above) mostly because they have different vocalisations than the forms which replace them, and the French (speaking) tolerate homophones much, much less than the English, (speaking) or, perhaps, any other language.
I mentioned above the curious effect of American English generally representing a slice of UK English from a few centuries ago, similarly, Canadian French (in part) strongly resembles French French from a few centuries ago, and ligatures and accents and whatnot are taken a great deal more seriously there than in France.
Yes, but this does not explain "role", which is always spelled without the accent in any kind of modern English (UK or American alike). It seems that *only* mathematicians of a certain stripe insist on the archaic spelling. I wonder why.
Incidentally, congratulations to your wife and also to you on the occasion of the birth of your first child.
Thanks! There are some pictures at http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/sophie/
-- Peter