A few things about the circumflex accent in French

This post is from my old "Ask a Frenchman" series, which I'm reviving a little. Today, we're talking about the French and English languages, and diacritics. Today, we’re delving into one of the oddities of the French language: its diacritics, more specifically, the circumflex accent.If you’re not too familiar with the language, the circumflex accent is the little "roof" (my first-grade teacher, Ms. Rieumajou, called it "a little hat") that can be found above certain vowels. Like this: â, ê, î, ô, û.It all started with a question I was asked a while ago.“Why is there a circumflex accent on dîner? I know that, in most cases, it replaces a missing ‘s,’ but what’s the story with this word?”Here is my answer, along with a few more details about this funny-looking accent. And yes, I'm totally using this question as an excuse to tell you about that part of the history of the French language. I'd use anything as an excuse to talk about the history of the French language!First of all, the…