I can no longer enter the French word fenêtre, -or any ê into a document.

My setup
- MacBook Pro 15" HiRes latest model
- French keyboard
- Systemwide English language with French locales
- latest OS 10.6.5 Build 10H574

to obtain the ê I type 
^ the sign
e the letter

so far so good, but this sequence starts a weird command line mode (I don't know that stuff), I get strange results depending on what I type next :
- tries to execute a shell bash command (I know because it's complaining that the command passed is invalid)
- backward deletes chars
- jumps to the next line


I tried ¨ - is ok, works
but Ê does not, same issue as ê

My intermediate solution : copy and paste from textEdit

Thomas