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Pronounching -er in French | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Meadowmeal Pentaglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5719 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, French, English, German, Polish Studies: Romanian | Message 9 of 12 01 June 2009 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's the ethymology: hiver comes from latin hibernum and hier from latin heri, so that's why there's an "e" and not "ai", like in clair or pair, which come from clarus and par. I don't know why the académiciens never opted to add an accent grave though.
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6380 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 12 02 June 2009 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||
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You just have to remember.
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| diabolo menthe Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5981 days ago 68 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Swedish, Japanese | Message 11 of 12 11 June 2009 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | ||
This is correct. French is an etymological language in its pronunciation, like English. It is for this reason as well that words like "ville" and "famille" differ in pronunciation. Ville comes from the Latin villa, and famille from the Latin familia, giving ville its audible L sound, and famille its Y sound. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RBenham Triglot Groupie IndonesiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5651 days ago 60 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Indonesian | Message 12 of 12 20 June 2009 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it's not as simple as that. Apparently, the French stopped pronouncing those rs altogether for a while, but some of them came back under the influence of the spelling, whereas the pronunciation of some words without the r (including all infinitives in -er) was too well-established.
In the case of -ll- generally the presence or absence of an i in the Latin etymon is a very good guide, but there is no rule for the -er ending that I'm aware of other than that all infinitives in -er are pronounced like -é, and maybe occupations like boucher and pâtissier as well (which is to say I can't think of any that don't behave this way), and adjectives in -ier like forestier? I can't think of any monosyllables that behave this way, but that may say more about my memory than about French pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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