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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4672 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 9 of 22 25 December 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged |
I'm not so sure about that.
Say that "sein", "seins", "saint", "saints", "sain", "seing" all become "sin."
"Mot" and "maux" become "mô."
"Champ" and "chant" become "chan."
"Serre", "cerf", and "serf" become "ser."
Would this really make reading (or vocabulary acquisition, for that matter) less confusing?
Edited by tastyonions on 25 December 2013 at 6:26pm
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| tbreit Newbie United States Joined 5222 days ago 17 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 10 of 22 25 December 2013 at 7:52pm | IP Logged |
This might also help:
http://www.fluentfrenchnow.com/how-to-pronounce-plus-in-spok en-french/4/
2 persons have voted this message useful
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4706 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech*
| Message 11 of 22 25 December 2013 at 8:33pm | IP Logged |
I think it would. You have to learn to deal with homophones anyway, since they sound the same and it would make learning to read and looking up words you've heard easier. It would make reading easier in general, even for native speakers, as there would be less clutter and you wouldn't have to move your eyes as much to read the same amount of text. But words with mandatory liaison would have to be written together, I guess, otherwise there could be phrases that are spelled the same, but sound different because of different liaison.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6604 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 12 of 22 25 December 2013 at 11:38pm | IP Logged |
IDK, I prefer homophones to words that are both homographs AND homophones. It's convenient to keep the distinction at least in writing. But it would probably make more sense to write words differently if they are pronounced differently.
But I'm not learning French :P
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| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5567 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 13 of 22 28 December 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
Serpent wrote:
But I'm not learning French :P |
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That's just perverse.
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| Richard Burton Newbie Spain Joined 4339 days ago 34 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek*
| Message 14 of 22 30 December 2013 at 1:58pm | IP Logged |
I found several other cases of these words having two pronunciations depending on the job they are doing, cant think of all of them now, plus is one I was aware of, another is
"tous", if it is a pronoun, substituting the things refered to, the s is pronounced, if it is before the noun, you say it "regularly"
I dont find it confusing, quite the contrary, it is logical and helpful; you need a dictionary which alert you of these things; the two I use "Robert micro" and some other bigger both give this information in a "Remarque" section or after the phonetic transcription, so maybe it is time for you to get a proper dictionary, not bilingual; these probably dont cover this kind of details
(Of course liason is a different matter)
Edited by Richard Burton on 30 December 2013 at 2:10pm
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4714 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 15 of 22 30 December 2013 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
tastyonions wrote:
I'm not so sure about that.
Say that "sein", "seins", "saint", "saints", "sain", "seing" all become "sin."
"Mot" and "maux" become "mô."
"Champ" and "chant" become "chan."
"Serre", "cerf", and "serf" become "ser."
Would this really make reading (or vocabulary acquisition, for that matter) less
confusing?
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It depends. In Belgium and even more in Quebec, the length and openness of the vowels
matters for the pronunciation. Actually it does in standard French too, but the French
often don't pronounce it as such. But for me, "je serai" and "je serais" do not have
the same pronunciation at all.
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| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4672 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 16 of 22 30 December 2013 at 4:45pm | IP Logged |
In the cases I've given the pronunciations are all the same everywhere, as far as I know. But you're right that the differences in vowel pronunciation would be an issue for any spelling reform. In La langue française pour les nuls, the (French) author lists as homophones some words that would not be in Quebec for exactly the reason you mentioned.
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