A Special Case in the teaching of French Spelling in Spain in the Nineteenth Century: the Exercises of Bergnes de las Casas

Abstract

This work briefly addresses the emergence of the «cacographic method» in France, launched by Noël and Chapsal's Nouvelle grammaire française, rédigée sur un plan très-méthodique, et contenant de nombreux exercices d’orthographe, de syntaxe et de punctuation (1823) in order to better analyse Antonio Bernes de las Casas' Novísimo Chantreau, ó gramática francesa, published in Barcelona in 1845, a book which includes cacography exercises aimed not at a French audience but at Spaniards wishing to learn the French language, something which was unheard of at the time. A comparison between Bergnes's exercises and those of Noël and Chapsal, which the Spanish author used to justify their inclusion in his grammar, enables us to determine how a method aimed at native speakers of French was imported into the teaching of FLE in Spain.