Re: French spelling scheme

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

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