FR : chômage - accent circonflexe

[Madame Jo]

Is it necessary to use a circonflexe on chomage? A colleague tells me that circonflexe accents are no longer necessary if the word will not be confused with another.

 

[Kajeetah]

Il faut garder l'accent circonflexe je crois, même avec la "nouvelle orthographe," car il indique la façon dont le "o" doit être prononcé.
Cette nouvelle règle ne vaut que pour les exemples que vous trouverez dans le tableau de ce lien

http://www.orthographe-recommandee.info/regles4.htm

 

[petit1]

There is a circonflexe on "chômage" as well as there is one on "fenêtre" or "hôpital", even if there is no possible confusion.
The ancient spelling of "chômer" was "chaumer" , from the verb "caumare". The circonflexe transcribes the pronunciation "au".

 

[boterham]

Theoretically, the accent is no longer necessary on "i" and "u" with a few exceptions (see links). This dates back to the 1990 spelling reform (which wasn't really applied). That means no change to "chômage".

http://www.liberation.fr/vous/2005/03/07/l-accent-circonflexe-n-a-plus-la-cote_511932
http://www.editions-larousse.fr/minisites/PLI2007/PLI2007-ortho90.pdf

 

[Kajeetah]

I think your colleague mixed up 2 things:
- the new spelling rules (see links)
- the fact that some "accents circonflexes" have no etymological meaning but were added to avoid confusion between two words. Ex: "du" (la Dame du Lac) and "dû" (il aurait dû demander la permission, réclamer son dû)

I hope other forum users will correct me if I'm wrong.