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.
It may be placed after an initial letter used to abbreviate a word. It is often placed after each individual letter in acronyms and initialisms (e.g. "U.S."). However, the use of full stops after letters in an initialism or acronym is declining, and many of these without punctuation have become accepted norms (e.g., "UK" and "NATO"). [b]
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 vowels that characterize Modern French appeared during the period in question. [citation needed]
Ï, lowercase ï, is a symbol used in various languages written with the Latin alphabet; it can be read as the letter I with diaeresis, I-umlaut or I-trema.. Initially in French and also in Afrikaans, Catalan, Dutch, Galician, Southern Sami, Welsh, and occasionally English, ï is used when i follows another vowel and indicates hiatus in the pronunciation of such a word.
Both letters were also used by Anglo-Saxon scribes who also used the Runic letter Wynn to represent /w/. Þ (called thorn; lowercase þ) is also a Runic letter. Ð (called eth; lowercase ð) is the letter D with an added stroke. Kiowa is ordered on phonetic principles, like the Brahmic scripts, rather than on the historical Latin order.
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 its uvular r, nasal vowels, and three processes affecting word-final sounds:
More than 100 letters that never reached the crew of a French warship have been read for the first time since they were sent 265 years ago. Rare ‘treasure box’ of French letters opened and ...
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.