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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.
On the other hand, a move to restore classical word roots (Latin or Ancient Greek), occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries; many words from Old French had their spelling re-Latinized. While this did not generally affect their pronunciation (e.g. debt , doubt , indict , mayor ), in some cases it did (e.g. abnormal , adventure , benefit ).
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 ...
The influence of French on English pronunciation is generally held to have been fairly minor, but a few examples have been cited: [15] The use of non-word-initial stress patterns in some loan words of French origin; The phonemisation of the voiced fricatives /z/ and /v/.
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 pronunciation of such words, in many cases, a spelling pronunciation varies by speaker and gives rise to widely varying stylistic effects. [16] In particular, the gemination of consonants other than the liquids and nasals /m n l ʁ/ is "generally considered affected or pedantic". [ 17 ]
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).