The French Revolution and Language

During the French Revolution the Republic mandated many changes and this included changes to the French language. Probably one of the famous of the changes is to the counting system. Does anyone one know of any other changes that didn't happen?
 
During the French Revolution the Republic mandated many changes and this included changes to the French language. Probably one of the famous of the changes is to the counting system. Does anyone one know of any other changes that didn't happen?
Errr... What?
Citation, please? I've never heard of any such thing.

The Republic attempted to rename months and so on, but I don't remember any changes to the language.
 
It was never anything too major, but this is why Standard French use constructions like quatre-vingt-dix for 90 instead of nonante like other romance languages, another example would be the attempt at replacing all the honorifics with citoyen though this one obviously didn't stay, and I was wondering if there were others.
 
It was never anything too major, but this is why Standard French use constructions like quatre-vingt-dix for 90 instead of nonante like other romance languages,

This was caused by the Revolution? That doesn't seem to make sense. Why would the First Republic, which so favored decimal systems, mandate vigesimal counting for the numbers 70-99? If anything you would expect them to favor the use of septante and nonante (which did become adopted in Belgium and Switzerland).

Also, it wouldn't explain why French Canada also uses this system.
 
This was caused by the Revolution? That doesn't seem to make sense. Why would the First Republic, which so favored decimal systems, mandate vigesimal counting for the numbers 70-99? If anything you would expect them to favor the use of septante and nonante (which did become adopted in Belgium and Switzerland).

Also, it wouldn't explain why French Canada also uses this system.

As to the specifics I don't know why they picked it, but the change was made for standardization, the vigesimal system did exist in a few regions prior to the revolution. As far as French Canada is concerned it also depended on where you live, I had a teacher who grew up in a French speaking village in Nova Scotia and they used the decimal system. I would have to do more research to see if Quebec French original used the a vigesimal system or they adopted it later to better match Standard French.
 
As to the specifics I don't know why they picked it, but the change was made for standardization, the vigesimal system did exist in a few regions prior to the revolution. As far as French Canada is concerned it also depended on where you live, I had a teacher who grew up in a French speaking village in Nova Scotia and they used the decimal system. I would have to do more research to see if Quebec French original used the a vigesimal system or they adopted it later to better match Standard French.

It's true that both the decimal and vigesimal counting systems were used in various parts of France for centuries. But I don't think the decision to adopt the modern hybridized system (decimal for 1-69, vigesimal for 70-99) was made during the Revolution. I believe the Académie settled upon it sometime before then.
 
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The vigesimal system is quite old in French, in fact it's probably a holdover from Gaulish (what's called a "substrate" effect). The revolutionary government certainly didn't create it. If they had any relation to it, it was probably to adopt it as the French standard over the decimal system because it happened to be the system used in the Île-de-France.
 
It's true that both the decimal and vigesimal counting systems were used in various parts of France for centuries. But I don't think the decision to adopt the modern hybridized system (decimal for 1-69, vigesimal for 70-99) was made during the Revolution. I believe the Académie settled upon it sometime before then.
You may be right about the Académie picking prior but I know the revolutionaries were the ones pushed standardization on the regional languages as it was the one who replace the regional cultures.
 
You may be right about the Académie picking prior but I know the revolutionaries were the ones pushed standardization on the regional languages as it was the one who replace the regional cultures.

You're definitely right about the revolutionary government suppressing France's minority languages (I just did a presentation on this). The policy wasn't formalized in education until the time of the Third Republic, but during the First Republic the widespread view was that:
A) Speaking "patois" (non-Île-de-France varieties) and other minority languages kept people in a state of ignorance and held back their social/economic progress
B) It prevented the effective unification of France and the creation of a national French identity
C) It represented dangerous counter-revolutionary sentiment that was a threat to the Republic

B is still a stated reason for maintaining France's monolingual language policy today.
 
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