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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
French also shows enormous phonetic changes between the Old French period and the modern language. Spelling, however, has barely changed, which accounts for the wide differences between current spelling and pronunciation. Some of the most profound changes have been: The loss of almost all final consonants.
Anglo-Norman French, then French: ~29% Latin, including words used only in scientific, medical or legal contexts: ~29% Germanic: ~26% Others: ~16%. The pervasiveness of words of French origin that have been borrowed into English is comparable to that of borrowings from Latin. Estimates vary up, but up to 45% of all English words may have a ...
English words of French origin, such as art, competition, force, money, and table are pronounced according to English rules of phonology, rather than French, and English speakers commonly use them without any awareness of their French origin. This article covers French words and phrases that have entered the English lexicon without ever losing ...
Spelling may reflect a folk etymology (as in the English words hiccough and island, so spelt because of an imagined connection with the words cough and isle), or distant etymology (as in the English word debt in which the silent b was added under the influence of Latin). Spelling may reflect morphophonemic structure rather than the purely ...
The influence of the Anglo-Norman language on English had left words of French and Norman origin in England. Some words of Romance origin now found their way back into French as doublets through war and trade. Also, the meaning and usage of many words from Old French transformed. Spelling and punctuation were extremely variable.
Spelling and punctuation before the 16th century was highly erratic, but the introduction of printing in 1470 provoked the need for uniformity.. Several Renaissance humanists (working with publishers) proposed reforms in French orthography, the most famous being Jacques Peletier du Mans who developed a phonemic-based spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550).
Modern French allows for fewer word orders than Latin or Old French, both of which Modern French has evolved from. In both Latin and Old French, all six potential word orders are possible: Subject-verb-object (SVO) Verb-object-subject (VOS) Object-subject-verb (OSV) Subject-object-verb (SOV) Object-verb-subject (OVS) Verb-subject-object (VSO)