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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.
The difference between stressed and unstressed syllables in French is less marked than in English. Vowels in unstressed syllables keep their full quality, regardless of whether the rhythm of the speaker is syllable-timed or mora-timed (see isochrony). [62] Moreover, words lose their stress to varying degrees when pronounced in phrases and ...
^1 "Context" refers to the syllable context at the Vulgar Latin or Gallo-Romance stage. The contexts are as follows: An "open" context is a stressed syllable followed by at most a single consonant at the Vulgar Latin stage. A "closed" context is any other syllable type (unstressed, or followed by two or more consonants).
France (common, English and French) French Republic (official, English), République Française (official, French), L'Hexagone (often journalistic, colloquial French), Gaul (former name, English), Gaule (former name, French), Γαλλία (Gallia) (Contemporary Greek and Latin name), Frankreich (common German), Francia (common Italian ...
Almost all written words are quite short (one syllable). Syllables (unless they are pronounced with mid tone) end in a tone letter: one of b s j v m g d, leading to apparent "consonant clusters" such as -wj; w can be the main vowel of a syllable (e.g. tswv) Syllables can begin with sequences such as hm-, ntxh-, nq-.
[1] /a/ is not diphthongized, but some speakers pronounce it [æ] if it is in a closed syllable or an unstressed open syllable, [2] as in French of France. The pronunciation in final open syllables is always phonemically /ɑ/, but it is phonetically [ɑ] or [ɔ] (Canada [kanadɑ] ⓘ or [kanadɔ] ⓘ), the latter being informal.
The first syllable of a word is the initial syllable and the last syllable is the final syllable. In languages accented on one of the last three syllables, the last syllable is called the ultima , the next-to-last is called the penult , and the third syllable from the end is called the antepenult.
French of France (French: français de France [fʁɑ̃sɛ də fʁɑ̃s]) is the predominant variety of the French language in France, Andorra and Monaco, in its formal and informal registers. It has, for a long time, been associated with Standard French .