Re: Spoken French, coins

En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

> Matt M. wrote:
>
> > "Moé chu pas propre mais chu pas malade non pus"
>
>
> I assume that this means that "oi" in Quebec is still /wE/, as
> in pre-Revolutionary France?
Indeed. And it is still /wE/ in some parts of France, but only with old
speakers. It's considered inelegant, to say the least :)) (funny enough, in pre-
Revolutionary France, it's the pronunciation /wa/ which was considered like
that. The two pronunciation just swapped place :)) ).

  Some poor woman was guillotined,
> supposedly, for saying something positive about her "roi",
> whereas in fact she meant her "roue" (spinning wheel).
>
The story I know is that a woman escaped guillotine by saying she was not
talking about a "roi", but a "rouet" (the meaning being what you explained).
This story is part of the archives of French Justice, and funny enough it's
through this story that linguists dated until when the pronunciation /wE/ of
the digraph 'oi' was still the main one.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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