Re: French spelling scheme

En réponse à Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>:

> I've always loved orthography design, and have devised some sort of
> spelling "reform" (or just meddling) for most languages that I'm
> familiar
> enough with. This is an old one by me, though I've never presented it to
> the list...
>
> In respelling French, I set three aims: a) minimize or wholly eliminate
> diacritics - I always resented the time it took me to type that French
> homework;
<sob> I *love* diacritics!!! So nice and esthetically pleasing. They make
reading less boring :)))) .

 b) make French more graphically similar to the other Romance
> languages, and its ancestor, Latin; and c) all the while trying to bring
> the orthography closer to the spoken language, especially in
> conjugations
> and other morphological domains.
>
Quite contradictory those two :) . If you get rid of the -ent ending of 3rd
person plural, then you lose the similarity with Latin. And what about all the
silent 's' of plurals? Do you keep them or get rid of them (after all, the
article is always enough to indicate plural :) ). And what about the phenomenon
of liaison, especially in conjugation ("pensent-ils" is pronounced /pa~s'til/,
the "t" is not silent there :) ).

> In achieving the first aim, I first rejected the need to distinctuate
> non-
> conflicting homonyms (or different usages of the same morpheme, whatever
> we
> call it) by using the accent grave; so "ou" and "où" are both "ou". The
> preposition "à" is changed to "a", while the conflicting form "a", 3p sg
> of "avoir", is changed to "ha" (and so is the entire verb paradigm - je
> hai, tu has, il ha, etc).
>
:) In your orthography, "j hai" is more correct :) .

> Then there's the circonflex, which I simply eliminate in full - there
> will
> be plenty of etymology when I'm done, anyways ;) ;) I do realize that
> the â
> is pronounced distinctly as [A] by a dwindling amount of pedants (or
> that's
> my impression, at least), but so be it.
>
It corresponds to the phonetic evolution anyway.

> Finally, there's the accent aigu, accent grave, and pas-d'accent making
> an
> actual phonetic distinction between [e], [E], and [@] ({é}, {è}, and
> {e},
> respectively). It is my impression that those distinctions are not
> minimal... correct me if I'm wrong! :)
They are, and it's even more complicated than that. But I will explain later.

 To begin with, at least, I
> advance
> to delete both accents, briefly not noticing any cases where the French
> person would not be sure how to pronounce the unaccented word; "ai"
> could
> be used to clearly mark out any [E]'s, if need be. I'm forgetting the
> final -é; make that an -ee, and no more worries, just sit down and have
> a
> cup of "cafee" :) -ez can also be retained to indicate an underlying
> final /es/.
>
I don't understand the last one. The only use of -ez I can think of is the 2nd
person plural ending, and it's pronounced /e(z)/.

> Almost forgot the c-cedilla... Somewhat more problematic. For the time
> being, I suppose to simply replace it with "s" whenever applicable,
> though
> I'm sure the French would really turn their noses to a reformed "Sa
> va?" :) :)
>
It loses etymology, but for the rest it's rather funny :) .

> And I've never liked all those apostrophes. Why bother? Just mark it
> with
> an empty space: "l Avignon", "je t aime", "ce qu il ha fait", etc.
>
Well, I prefer the apostrophe to nothing, but so be it :) .

> Hah; done with the diacritics... more or less :) How did they come up
> with
> those in the first place? :)
>
They were useful, I will show you later :) .

> Now on to my favorite, the "Latinization" scheme. My principal move is
> the
> introduction of "silent l": syllable final {el}, {al}, and {ol} are
> pronounced as {eau}, {au}, and {ou} (I know, {eau} and {au} are
> pronounced
> the same - just hinting at where it's coming from), except when followed
> by
> a vowel, in which case they're fully pronounced (pretty much the rule
> for
> any final consonant in French).
Wow, this one is nice! I like it.

 This actually improves the structure a
> lot:
> instead of the orthographic variations of the adjective in "beau
> chanson"
Well, "chanson" is feminine, so it's "belle chanson". If you want to use a
masculine example, take for instance "beau garçon", it goes well with "bel
homme" :) .

> and "bel homme", it's {bel} in both cases. Likewise, no -x plural
> thingie,
> just "bels chansons". This sure would have helped me, back then, to
> understand how à + le and à + les could become "au" and "aux"... this
> way,
> you'd have "al" (also for the "a l'" form) and "als". Even more profits,
> we'd see the return of "principals" and "animals". The relationship
> between -eau and -elle would be re-established orthographically:
> "chapeau"
> > "chapel", "bateau" > "batel".
>
> Note that the silent-l rule is hardly any more complicated or less
> intuitive than the current nasal-vowel-skewering and silent-final
> rules. "Bon" is pronounced quite different in "bon chanson" and "bon
> homme", yet the orthography doesn't care.
>
Rather, "bonne chanson" and "bon homme" are pronounced the same, but the
orthography is different. Well, that rule of liaison is not that bad, even with
your scheme I don't see how you're gonna get rid of it :) .

> I should note in passing that I'd do away with all unnecessary double-
> consonants; "lunettes" > "lunetes", "homme" > "home". Silent-e takes
> well
> enough care of those things.
Well, I agree for the second one, not for the first, where the double {tt} marks
that the preceeding {e} is pronounced /E/ (in fact, the double {mm} also marks
that {o} is pronounced /O/, not /o/, but it's less problematic there). If you
get rid of the diacritics as well as the double letters, how are you gonna make
the difference between "lunete" /lynEt/ and "rarete" /rar(@)te/? I mean, the
distinction between /e/ and /E/ can easily be forgotten in the orthography, but
not the distinction /e/|/E/ vs. /@/.

 "ss" remains to mark /s/ as opposed to /z/,
> and "ll" is retained and given the Standard Spanish value of [j].
>
So "paille" > "palle"? :) What about words like "ail"?

> You might be thinking that the silent-l rule would endanger existing
> final
> l's; why, we'd just add a magic e - "Rossignol" > "Rossignole".
>
Male rossignols are gonna beak you to death I'm afraid :))) .

> A slightly more controversial idea of mine is to replace most "eu" and
> oe-
> ligatures and "oeu" sequences with a simple "o". This is etymologically
> sound, and quite regular; the rule would be: pronounce back rounded
> before
> a non-silent m, otherwise front rounded (aperture as per current rules
> of "eu"). So we'd usher in a new age of "emperors" and "coulors". Some
> verb
> paradigms would become drastically more structural: "je pos, nous
> pouvons".
>
> The main problem would be various borrowed or learned /o/, such as
> in "motor". This might possibly be solved with the magic e: "motore".
It's "moteur", so no need for silent e in your orthography, if I understood
correctly. But what about the first {o} of "moteur"? How do we know it's
pronounced /o/? Put a silent e > "moteor"? :)))

> Not
> quite flexible enough, though... In any case, those are minor
> considerations.
>
> To increase facility, out with all those non-existing endings, such as
> 3p
> pl -ent in the regular verbs. So "ils parle ensemble", for heaven's
> sake.
>
And out for the connection between French and other Romance languages and Latin
:)) . The connection is only partly kept with Romanian :))) .

> Finally, a few exceptions might be entertained to improve structurality:
> e.g. "eux" could be respelled to "els" and assigned a special
> pronunciation.
>
:)

> Hmm, how to respell "est"? Out with the "s": "Il et alee." Which
> requires
> us to remove that pompous "t" of the conjunction "et": "Moi e toi."
>
Just logical :) .

> A quick sample text:
>
> "Le quatorce juillet et la fete nationale de la France. Al jour d hui,
> les
> drapels tricolores sont partout."
>
It's "quatorze", with a /z/. Also, I see that "sont" keeps its ending. Doesn't
it look strange if you get rid of -ent? It breaks connections in my opinion.

> "Excusez moi, quele hore et il? Il et huit hore moin quart."
>
According to your scheme, it should be "hor" /9r/, not "hore" /Or/. Also, I
don't know why some silent final consonnants are kept (as the {t} in "partout")
while some aren't (like the {s} which should end "moin". It is necessary as
"moins un" is pronounced /mwE~z9~/, not /mwE~.9~/).

> Thanks to ye Francophones for tolerating this so far,
> Óskar :)
>
It was funny :))) .

> PS my spelling schemes are as much humorous as dead-serious. Please do
> not
> have strong feelings about anything I write of this kind :)
>
I don't, as long as you won't have any against me when I present you my
orthographic reform of Icelandic :)))))))) . Let's get rid of thorn, Mac users
can't see it! :))))))

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr