author
active 16th century Louis Meigret
A bold Renaissance grammarian, translator, and spelling reformer, he helped push French toward a clearer written form. His 1550 grammar is often described as the first full grammatical description of French written in French.
1 Audiobook
Traité touchant le commun usage de l'escriture françoise
by active 16th century Louis Meigret
About the author
Born in Lyon around 1500 and active in the middle of the 16th century, Louis Meigret is remembered as one of the energetic language thinkers of the French Renaissance. He worked as both a grammarian and a translator, and his writing shows a strong interest in how French was actually spoken and written.
He is best known for the Traité de la Grammaire française, published in 1550, which is widely noted as the first major grammar of French written in French. Meigret also argued for spelling reform, favoring a more phonetic system that would make writing better match pronunciation.
That made him an important figure in the broader effort to defend and shape French as a literary and scholarly language. Although many of his spelling ideas did not become standard, his work still stands out as an early and ambitious attempt to describe French systematically.