|
 |
Will the French ortograph be reformed? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5168 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes  Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 55 16 November 2010 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
After having posted my response to Gusutafu, I thougt "oh no, I forgot to answer the second sentence"! Thank you for your response then, that's exactly what I meant. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5590 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 18 of 55 16 November 2010 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
First of all, I never piped a word about "etymology", because I also thought that was totally irrelevant.
I did read it and I agree with you, it doesn't go quite far enough.
Read that one, too.
Sorry, mate, that is not a spelling problem but a lexical one. Would you dream of saying: les chevals, les baux (pluriel de 'bal'? Juste like you say: les vitraux (not regular vitrails like les rails), les travaux etc. In these cases pronunciation tells us the difference. What bugged me was: hibou, bijou, caillou, chou etc. taking an x instead of an s. Why? Same pronunciation as 'les sous etc.'.
But you say 'la table que j'ai faite' in French, not 'la table que j'ai fait'. All right, it wouldn't be too difficult to change that habit. And I fully agree, rules about past participle endings are a bit of a nightmare.
That of course is a contradiction : vous faites, vous dites is still contemporary usage, as far as I know. Or do you really say: vous faisez quoi ce soir? Vous disez? And do you also propose to change English plurals: childs, mouses, gooses, oxes etc.? There is a limit to housecleaning I think. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 19 of 55 16 November 2010 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
A child of three knows "est" and "être" in the spoken form, therefore the circumflex is irrelevant to language "in the raw". The orthography here only serves to help you remember the orthography, and there is nothing sacred about spelling.
No, because IPA is a (nearly) phonetic transcription, not a phonemic one. This is necessary because phoneme structures work differently in different languages. French in IPA would be horrible, because wherever liaison occurs, a change in spelling would be required. This would be the case in many other languages where less extreme boundary effects occur. In a good many languages voicing of consonants is a non-phonemic distinction. In Gaelic, for example, the difference between T and D is that T is aspirated and D is non-aspirated. Both are normally unvoiced, but if you put an N in front, both become voiced by proximity. Writing in IPA would mean taking 2 letters T and D and multiplying them into 4 combinations, without achieving any additional clarity: /t/, /th/, /d/, /dh/ Instead, each language develops an orthography that is efficient for it in terms of phonemes. This is the reason why the circumflex is irrelevant -- it marks information not extant in the language itself, information which is foreign to French. It helps foreigners, but it confuses native speakers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5590 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 20 of 55 16 November 2010 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
You seem not to have read my point #1 [about "circumflex"]. a. pronunciation (by the way, s_allard, nôtre/vôtre are not pronounced like notre/votre, at least not in most French-speaking milieux. And âpre is certainly not pronounced appre in Canada either, nor âcre accre, opiniâtre, acariâtre etc.) b. disambiguity
Your solution? Dropping the N? Why did you not read what I wrote, tried to pronounce "ils chantet, riet, couret etc." Had you bothered to do so, you would have realised that your solution is no solution at all. Why do you complain about a phonetic confusion between plural verbal "-ent" and adjectival "-ent" endings? There is no problem: adjective -ent ending is always nasal /en/. Verbs use personal suffixes: 3rd personal plural always ends in mute -nt [except when preceded by an O, because the combination -on is 'always' nasal /on/ ils ont, sont, font, reviendront.....]. So adjective 'exigent' will be pronounced /en/ at the end, while the ending 'ils exigent' will be mute. We could of course get rid of the -nt and have zero personal endings for I, you (singular), he/she/it and they. The sound would be the same, but how would we then justify the 3rd person plural /on/ sound in 'sont, ont, font, vont and in the future? And the 'liaison' problems we'd get into! No, much simpler to keep -ent for 3rd ppl. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 55 16 November 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
These points are well taken. It is true that normative pronunciation is in line with these arcane grammatical rules, i.e., most people say travaux, la table que j'ai faite, vous dites, etc. But--and this is the key point--these things are a constant source of mistakes and doubts, especially the question of the past participles. What you do hear is the common "mistakes" of native speakers, usually less educated of course, who will spontaneously use forms that are more logical but considered incorrect. Does "vous faisez" exist? It is an egregious mistake, but if you do a google on it, you might be surprised. The past participle is the most common example of this kind of mistake, especially in the pronominal construction where the written form does always not have a distinctive pronunciation. Even chevals can be found. It is true that I am advocating more than simple spelling reforms whereby we just tinker with some minor details. In fact, I would like to see some really serious attempts to eliminate many of the complexities and endless exceptions that characterize French grammar. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 22 of 55 16 November 2010 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The role of the circumflex as an indicator of phonetic distinction has been steadily shrinking. Here is a quote from the Office québécois de la langue française: "Aujourd'hui, certaines des distinctions phonétiques représentées par l'accent circonflexe ont disparu. Cet accent ne modifie pas la prononciation des lettres i et u; les rectifications de l'orthographe de 1990 ont d'ailleurs proposé qu'il disparaisse sur ces lettres. De plus, en France, la distinction entre a et â et entre è et ê est pratiquement disparue, même si elle est toujours vivante ici. On peut donc dire que l'accent circonflexe en fonction phonétique peut préciser la prononciation d'une voyelle, mais qu'il peut aussi simplement rappeler un trait de prononciation aujourd'hui disparu." I do believe that the distinction vôtre/votre and nôtre/notre is slowly disappearing as well. If I recall correctly, there is no difference in pronunciation between these forms in the dialects of southern France. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| kerateo Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5647 days ago 112 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 23 of 55 17 November 2010 at 2:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
|
In a hundred years everyone will use the "cell phone texting ortography", I have to admit, I have a college degree and Spanish has a much easier ortography than french, but I have no clue how to use accents and I get confused sometimes with "S vs C vs Z" and "b vs v". If it wasnt for microsoft word I would be practically illiterate.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 24 of 55 17 November 2010 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Ummm... I did, which is why I said it was a "good point" and why I said "my solution isn't any better than the current situation". I read your post and you were right, so I said so.
Why wouldn't I? I makes reading harder.
Yes, but then you can't read "exigent" individually as a word, only as part of a phrase. This reduces the redundancy in the language. Redundancy allows us to understand despite errors; badly written, smudged or partly obscured words or to understand fragments of sentences where a page has been ripped or part of a sign obscured.
I didn't suggest dropping the ending, because I'm well aware of the issue of liaison. You could talk forever justifying the current state of affairs, but the fact of the matter is that -ent and -ent as distinct phonemes do complicate French orthography unnecessarily, and if it wasn't for the Académie Française enforcing the current model, natural reform would most likely have already taken place to distinguish the two. I suspect that the first thing to happen would have been the reduction of 3rd plural -ENT to -ET. The result would have been confusion with existing -ET words, as you say, but that would likely have been corrected quickly by a simple shift of your "un muet" to "un muét", which is consistent and obvious within the language as a whole. I might be wrong about how it would have panned out, but in the absence of authorities, spellings generally change to follow the spoken language, and that N just doesn't match anything in the spoken language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
