Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 phonology is the sound system of French. This article discusses mainly the phonology of all the varieties of Standard French . Notable phonological features include the uvular r present in some accents, nasal vowels , and three processes affecting word-final sounds:
Although tone diacritics and tone letters are presented as equivalent on the chart, "this was done only to simplify the layout of the chart. The two sets of symbols are not comparable in this way." [82] Using diacritics, a high tone is é and a low tone is è ; in tone letters, these are e˥ and e˩ .
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association. It is not a complete list of all possible speech sounds in the world's languages, only those about which stand-alone articles exist in this encyclopedia.
Bearing in mind that grammatical stress in French falls on the final full syllable of a phrase, this situation can be symbolized as follows (the symbol ˈ indicates stress): grand is /ˈɡʁɑ̃t/, which loses its final consonant at the end of a stress group and is realized as [ˈɡʁɑ̃];
The doublet of français and François in modern French orthography demonstrates the mix of dialectal features. [citation needed] At some point during the Old French period, vowels with a following nasal consonant began to be nasalized. While the process of losing the final nasal consonant took place after the Old French period, the nasal ...
In modern Quebec French, the /iː/ phoneme is used only in loanwords: cheap. The phonemes /y/ and /yː/ are not distinct in modern French of France or in modern Quebec French; the spelling <û> was the /yː/ phoneme, but flûte is pronounced with a short /y/ in modern French of France and in modern Quebec French.