I have installed Oracle9i Release 2(9.2.0.1.0) on RedHat Linux 8.0
I have the next parameters:

SQL> select * from nls_database_parameters;

PARAMETER VALUE
------------------------------------------------------------
NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS .,
NLS_CHARACTERSET WE8ISO8859P1
NLS_CALENDAR GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_SORT BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY $
NLS_COMP BINARY
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP FALSE
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET AL16UTF16
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION 9.2.0.1.0
------------------------------------------------------------

I try to do:

CREATE TABLE test (
t1 INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
t2 VARCHAR2(10)
);

INSERT INTO test VALUES(1,'français');

I have the error:
INSERT INTO test VALUES(1,'français')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00917: missing comma

If I replace the character ç with c for example, that's work.

I tried with the other database that has the configuration:
(I have the same error)
------------------------------------------------------------
SQL> select * from nls_database_parameters;

PARAMETER VALUE
------------------------------------------------------------
NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_TERRITORY AMERICA
NLS_CURRENCY $
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY AMERICA
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS .,
NLS_CHARACTERSET AL32UTF8
NLS_CALENDAR GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT DD-MON-RR
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_SORT BINARY
NLS_TIME_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM

NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY $
NLS_COMP BINARY
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS BYTE
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP FALSE
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET UTF8
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION 9.2.0.1.0

------------------------------------------------------------

Tkanks in advance four your advices.