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This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of French on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of French in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them.
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.
Vowels of Parisian French, from Collins & Mees (2013:225–226). Some speakers merge /œ̃/ with /ɛ̃/ (especially in the northern half of France) and /a/ with /ɑ/. In the latter case, the outcome is an open central between the two (not shown on the chart). Standard French contrasts up to 13 oral vowels and up to 4 nasal vowels.
Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ʔ , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed. A few letters, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, ʕ , were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter ﻉ , ʿayn, via the reversed apostrophe). [9]
See English alphabet#Letters for how the names of the letters of the alphabet are spelled. Similarly, the dispute over how to pronounce the X in Mac OS X may be better described as ten versus ex rather than as / ˈ t ɛ n / versus / ˈ ɛ k s /. In the case of Z, spelling out the letter as zee or zed is sufficient, if only one is considered ...
English this, Icelandic fræði 'science' s: s: voiceless alveolar fricative: English see, Spanish sí ('yes') z: z: voiced alveolar fricative: English zoo, German sein 'to be' S: ʃ: voiceless postalveolar fricative: English she, French chou 'cabbage' Z: ʒ: voiced postalveolar fricative: French jour 'day', English pleasure: C: ç: voiceless ...
Signs below a letter English cow [kʰaʊ̯], koi [kʰɔɪ̯] This vowel does not form a syllable of its own, but runs into the vowel next to it. (In English, the diacritic is generally left off: [kaʊ].) English boy [b̥ɔɪ̯], doe [d̥oʊ̯] Sounds like a loud whisper; [n̥] is like a whispered breath through the nose.
The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" (broadly transcribed as [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] in the IPA), German and Italian z [t͡s] and Italian z [d͡z] are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese.