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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.
"[be] on [your] guard". "On guard" is of course perfectly good English: the French spelling is used for the fencing term. en passant in passing; term used in chess and in neurobiology ("synapse en passant.") En plein air en plein air lit. "in the open air"; particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors. en pointe en pointe (in ...
Also excluded are words that come from French but were introduced into English via another language, e.g. commodore, domineer, filibuster, ketone, loggia, lotto, mariachi, monsignor, oboe, paella, panzer, picayune, ranch, vendue, and veneer. English words of French origin should be distinguished from French words and expressions in English.
Further problems are caused by examples of confusion with English, such as connection (incorrect) and connexion (correct). [3] Misspellings of French words outside the French language occur often and account for part of the etymology of some modern loanwords in English, such as English "caddie". [4]
Other closely related languages, however, have less interrelated ways of forming wh-questions with separate lexemes for each of these wh-pronouns. This includes Wardaman , which has a collection of entirely unrelated interrogative stems: yinggiya 'who', ngamanda 'what', guda 'where', nyangurlang 'when', gun.garr-ma 'how many/what kind'.
kw is used in various languages for the labialized velar consonant /kʷ/, and in Dene Suline (Chipewyan) for /k wh /. Used informally in English for phonemic spelling of qu, as in kwik (from quick), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European */ɡʷ/. ḵw is used in Alaskan Tlingit for /q wh /, which in Canada is written khw .
The pronunciation of the digraph wh in English has changed over time, and still varies today between different regions and accents.It is now most commonly pronounced /w/, the same as a plain initial w , although some dialects, particularly those of Scotland, Ireland, and the Southern United States, retain the traditional pronunciation /hw/, generally realized as [], a voiceless "w" sound.
A digraph that shares its pronunciation with a single character may be a relic from an earlier period of the language when the digraph had a different pronunciation, or may represent a distinction that is made only in certain dialects, like the English wh . Some such digraphs are used for purely etymological reasons, like ph in French.