Re: USAGE: Thorn vs Eth

En réponse à Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

>
> The Old French were *not* the same as the modern French.  _They_ did
> not have /Z/ - they still pronounced words like 'damage', 'gentle' etc
> with
> /dZ/ which was similar enough to the Old English sound written {cg} to
> keep my ancestors happy.
>
Very true, although my book on Old French said that the particular dialect that
would become Anglo-Norman had quite early deaffricated its affricates, compared
to other dialects of Old French..

> And Old French _did_ have the sounds [D] and [T].   The English 'faith',
> e.
> g.,
> is derived from Old French 'feit' [fEiT] - they were positional
> variants
> of /d/
> and /t/ and eventually died out.
>
My book said that they were already dead in all dialects by the XIth century
(which represents a very early version of Old French, so early that it nearly
cannot be called French at all). Were Anglo-Normans already in England by then?

And I thought the English had borrowed French words with final /t/ as [T] only
because of the fact that the French /t/ was dental rather than alveolar...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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

Reply