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Re: Nasal vowels (was Re: French spelling scheme)

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, May 7, 2001, 14:19
En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> > Which is perhaps why the French have only low nasal vowels. > > But AFAIK there's no real reason why other nasal vowels shouldn't occur. > Indeed, Portuguese has both mid and high nasal vowels. > > Old French, indeed, also had mid & high nasal vowels, as well as two > nasal > diphthongs: /a~/, /e~/, /i~/, /o~/, /y~/; /e~i/, /o~i/. > (There were also nasalized rising diphthongs; but the first element of > these became semivowels /j/, /w/ or /H/ early on.) > > Between the 13th & 16th centuries, the nasal vowels become lower > resulting > in the familiar ones of modern French, thus: > /e~/ --> /E~/ > /i~/ --> /e~/ --> /E~/ > /o~/ --> /O~/ > /y~/ --> /2~/ --> /9~/ > > The two diphthongs had been reduced to /E~/ and /wE~/ by the 16th cent. > Apparently some 17th cent. grammarians tried to preserve a difference > between the /E~/ derived from /e~i/ and /E~/ derived from /i~/, but in > vain. > > Apparently, in the common speech of the 16th & 17th centuries /a~/ and > /O~/ > were often confused (as they inevitably seem to be by anglophones) but, > except, I'm told, for a few areas, the two vowels are distinct in modern > French. However over the past half century or so, there has been a > marked > tendency for /9~/ to become unrounded and merge with /E~/, so that, e.g. > _lundi_ is now usually pronounce /lE~di/. >
Well, I wanted to answer myself, but your reply is better than anything I could have written Ray! One footnote: Though I'm only 25, I still use quite often the phoneme /9~/, even though it often has the allophone /E~/ in very fast speech. In fact, I use /9~/ in the extent that I use it even when saying "hein?" (French grunt-like phoneme meaning "what?" and usually pronounced /E~/). I don't think I will ever get rid of /9~/: I like that sound too much :) . Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>