Re: isle > ile?

From: Barry Garcia <Barry_Garcia@...>
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU <CONLANG@...>
Date: Saturday, January 13, 2001 9:15 AM
Subject: isle > ile?


>I was looking at a book I had borrowed from my school's library, and in
>it, there is a French map of the Philippines dating from 1682. What struck
>me was that instead of ile, they used isle, for island (not odd in and of
>itself). It got me to wondering, was the s still pronounced then? If not,
>how long did it take for is to stop being pronounced in that word, and
>when did the French decide to write island as ile?
I'm sure Christophe will have the real answer to this one, but I remember
being told in French class that anytime you see l'accent circonflex is where
there used to be an "s", like isle -> i^le or hospital -> ho^pital.
(Calculus texts seem to mostly use l'Ho^pital for l'Ho^pital's rule, but I
think I've seen one or two that say l'Hospital's rule.  So maybe the shift
was going on during the time l'Ho^pital was alive...?)

YHL