Nina Catach

Nina Catach (1923–1997) was a French linguist and linguistic historian who specialized in the history of French orthography.^[1] She worked at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and published several influential books on orthography and on spelling reform.

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Biography

Summarize

Perspective

She founded the HESO research group at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in 1962, dedicated to the history and structure of French spelling, a field she devoted her career to.^[1] She also founded the Association for Information and Research on Spelling and Writing Systems (AIROÉ).^[2] She earned a doctorate in linguistics in 1968, with a thesis entitled, L'orthographe française à l'époque de la Renaissance.^[3]

Among her most notable works are L'orthographe française (1980), Orthographe et lexicographie (1981), and LesListes orthographiques de base du français (1984), published with Nathan, as well as Dictionnaire historique de l'orthographe française (1994), published with Larousse, a comprehensive dictionary indicating spelling variations in French from the 16th century, the result of thirty years of research.^[4] She also authored Les Délires de l'orthographe (1989) with Plon and contributed to the Que sais-je? series with L'Orthographe (1978) and La Ponctuation (1994), published by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).^[2]

Catach was part of the expert committee that proposed and successfully implemented orthographic reforms in France in 1990, supported by Prime Minister Michel Rocard and approved by the Académie française.^[5]^[6] She championed a deeply humanistic approach to language, believing that spelling should not be a cause of discrimination or academic failure. Her work remains a reference in French language education across the Francophonie.

Personal

Catach was born in 1923 in Cairo, Egypt.^{[citation needed]}

Catach's daughter, Irène Rosier-Catach, is a linguist and philosopher, while her son, Laurent Catach, is an editor and linguist, responsible for digital editions of Dictionnaires Le Robert and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française.^[9]

Catach died in 1997 in Paris, France. She is buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery.^[10]

Selected works

L'orthographe française, Nathan, 1980
Orthographe et lexicographie, Nathan, 1981
Les listes orthographiques de base du français, Nathan, 1984
New linguistic approaches to a theory of writing. In: Battestini, S.P.X. (ed.) Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1986. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press (1986), pp. 161–174.
Dictionnaire historique de l'orthographe française, Larousse, 1994
La Ponctuation, PUF, 1994. ISBN 213046050X

Biography

Honors

Personal

Selected works

References

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