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Re: French spelling scheme

From:Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
Date:Monday, April 30, 2001, 14:47
On Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:19:51 +0200, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

><sob> I *love* diacritics!!! So nice and esthetically pleasing. They make >reading less boring :)))) .
I agree with you, but for a shorter distance :) I like acutes, but I find many different types of diacritics intermingling to be messy; I hate "ö" in my native orthography, for instance, for being the only umlaut character. So Spanish orthography is nice, IMO.
>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 :) ).
Hmm, I thought the -ent ending was completely non-existent, even in liaison. My system does not abandon liaison at all, though I understand why you got the impression. So the -ent ending may be kept, I guess. But this is nice; I'm learning more about French... That was kind of the purpose, actually :) The aims are contradictory, I know. My idea was to exchange some etymology (e.g. the circonflex, and "est" and "et") for more "worthwhile" etymology.
>:) In your orthography, "j hai" is more correct :) .
True - slight mistake :)
>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)/.
Well, that was pretty much what I was referring to :p
>> 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 :) .
An alternate idea is to add a "palatalizing e", as per "il mangeait": "Cea va?" and "nous commenceons". That would be quite Romance-style :)
>> 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 :) .
You might realize by now that the idea is kind of to make French more typable on the computer (without necessarily having a French keyboard); apostrophes are a pain to type, I'm sure we can agree on that :)
>> 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.
Thanks! :)
> 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" :) .
Oh, of course; the -son ending should have alerted me (Romance -tion/-sion words generally being feminine) :p
>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. /@/.
It would be "lunete" and "raretee"; I mentioned somewhere in passing that final -é would become -ee. But I'm not that strongly opposed to the double letters, per se; if they distinctuate [O] and [o], that's fair enough.
> "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"?
"all"? The advantage is more apparent in "feuille" > "folle" ("foille" and "foile" being ambiguous, if "oi" is to retain its value).
>Male rossignols are gonna beak you to death I'm afraid :))) .
:) :) I had very good relations with a male Rossignol recently, at the hotel were I work... :p
>> 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"? :)))
The first {o} is no problem because the fronting rule only applies to _stressed_ /o/. I saw "motor" in some silly dictionary, that's irrelevant. Perhaps "Garonne" is a better example...
>> 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. "Quatorze", all right :) Evidement, je suis pas Francophone! :p The case is rather that I've learnt French from mostly two sources: a) speaking with the French, which has only aided my practical learning, not my formal learning; b) from sucky classes that don't deal with anything close to the voicing details of various French words, such as "quatorze". Foreign study of French is a bit primitive, sometimes at least... :p
>> "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~/).
Yes, "hor"... stupid mistake. I would have put the "s" in "moins" if I'd only have remembered its presence :p :p This is really helping my French! :p
>> 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! :))))))
Sure! :) I've made reforms of Icelandic too, so bring it on! :p Óskar

Replies

Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>