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<plus> and Other Semi-silent French Words

  Tags: Pronunciation | French
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tastyonions
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 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
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 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/
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LaughingChimp
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 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
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 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
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 Message 13 of 22
28 December 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:

But I'm not learning French :P


That's just perverse.
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Richard Burton
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 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
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 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?



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
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 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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