History of ^

You've probably seen the accent circumflex before, either in French or perhaps in other languages. The accent circumflex, also sometimes called more informally "le chapeau chinois"(the Chinese hat) is the sign ^ which sometimes appears above any vowel. Like in the words "fenêtre" (window), "râper"(to grate, as in cheese), "rôti"(roasted), "connaître" (to know), or "sûr"(safe).

The accent circumflex in most French words indicates that in the past, an "s" used to to be present. This can be seen in many words with obvious relations to English: for example, I work at "Hôpital Necker", which obviously is quite similar to the English word "hospital." The picture of the tombstone inscription on the right, taken from the Catacombs, shows the original spelling of the month of August, "aoust", from 1792. However, the current French spelling is "août". (As an aside: there is also another ancient spelling in the picture...the word "Thuíleries" is now spelled without the "h", that is, "Tuileries".)

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The bonus picture below is a bit of graffiti I found particularly amusing near the Parc de Sceaux, where Dad and I took our bike ride last weekend. Although it would be nice to think that the graffiti was carried out by a hoodlum with a molecular biology bent (RNA = ribonucleic acid, the "message" spelled out by DNA), the chances are pretty slim. In fact, in France it's called something slightly different, ARN (l'acide ribonucléique).