Re: French spelling scheme

On Wed, 2 May 2001 06:20:51 +0000, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
wrote:

>>> 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;
>
>i.e. make it more like Old French ;)
That's one way to put it, but there's more to it, still :)

>The diacritics were all (except occasionally, and unsystematically, a mark
>like the acute - probably the old Latin 'apex') unknown before the 16th
>cent.  Then grammarians & printers started using the darn things in vague
>imitation of what they found in ancient Greek, recently 're-discovered'
>during the Renaissance.
[snip]

Very interesting account of the origin of diacritics :) Now I understand,
it's all one big Greek conspiracy... ;) ;) I've never been much of a fan of
diacritics, admittedly, and they haven't pleased me much during my study of
Ancient Greek.

>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.
>
>As far as I can see - (b) and (c) are almost diametrically opposed.  French
>has, without question, departed further from its Vulgar Latin 'mother' than
>any of its 'sister' languages have.  If, indeed, you represent spoken
>French, the orthography must surely depart even more from other Romance
>languages.
Yes, they are admittedly opposing aims. I've clarified by saying that the
intention would be to replace one set of etymology with another, more
useful, set of etymology. In my respellings (I'd prefer to label them
"conspellings for natlangs"), structurality is the main aim; etymology is
never my aim per se, but can be a useful method for other aims. Such is the
case here, that I introduce some etymological spellings, such as the
silent-l, in an attempt to improve structurality.


>>> "Le quatorce juillet et la fete nationale de la France. Al jour d hui,
les
>>> drapels tricolores sont partout."
>
>Umm - _al_ seems a poorer representation of /o/ than modern French _au_;
>and _drapels_ doesn't suggest /drapo/ to me!
Fine :) I understand that.

My argument for the silent l is that it can make things easier; consider
current French:

"au chateau"
"a l'homme"
"beau chateau"
"bel homme"

In my version:

"al chatel"
"al home"
"bel chatel"
"bel home"

I have no knowledge of modern French linguistics, but someone could easily
make me believe that there's an _underlying /l/_ in "au"; it seems justified
for all practical purposes. At least as much as there's an underlying /p/ in
"trop" and /s/ in "pas", which linguists do seem to agree on, at least
according to what I've read.

By structurality, I mean morpho-phonemic representation over phonetic
representation. Zealous phonetic representation can get quite useless for
the native user, especially if it's based on some perceived "universal
values" of the characters in the Latin alphabet. I don't mind redefining the
values within each language as long as there regularity, structure, and
visual relation to the orthographies of languages that are closely related,
for all practical purposes.

However, I notice now that while there may be an underlying /l/ in "au" and
"beau", there is certainly none in "chateau" and "bateau"; there I'd be
quite willing to withhold the silent l, lest the credibility of the l rule
be endangered. After all, in "le chateau est", there is no liaised [l], so
"le chatel et" would simply be deceptive, admittedly. But I stick by "al"
and "bel".

In other cases it's impossible to argue whether there's an underlying /l/ or
not, such as in "voudrais"; for practical purposes, however, we may decide
for there to be an underlying /l/, by morphological analogy with
other forms in the whole "vouloir" paradigm. Thus my spelling would have
"voldrais", in the interest of structurality.

>Another problem - which Oskar may have addressed; I missed his initial
>mailing - are final consonants; e.g. _aout_ (August) is normally pronounced
>/ut/, with final /t/, in contemporary French, but loses its final /t/ in
>the compound _mi-aout_ /miu/ (Mid-August, the feast of the Assumption [Aug.
>15th]).   Similarly while _Christ_ is /krist/, once it is compounded the
>final consonants go, thus: _Jésus-Christ_ /jezykri/.   There are other
>examples which I don't recall off-hand.
>
>Tho I guess if "silent-l" is 'restored', then these final consonants will
>stay in all written environments; if so, the reformed spelling does not
>seem to me to indicate actual French pronunciation any better than the
>current standard orthography does.
I've included my original post below, for your convenience :)

As to the "disappearing" final consonants, it would simply be detrimental
not to represent them in the orthography. Very detrimental. I'll rather
learn French with a rule saying "don't pronounce the p, t, s at the end of
words, and nasalize + cut the m, n - except if a vowel follows", than a
non-rule which would say "If a vowel follows "pa" as in "step", pronounce
[z], if a vowel follows "e" as in "and", pronounce [t], if a vowel follows
"cou" as in "blow", pronounce [p]..." The silent finals are, whether we like
it or not, phonemic, and must be represented by the orthography. Otherwise
there'd be utter chaos for the foreign student.

Regards,
Óskar

---

(My original posting)

"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; 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.

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).

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.

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! :) 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/.

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?" :) :)

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.

Hah; done with the diacritics... more or less :) How did they come up with
those in the first place? :)

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). This actually improves the structure a lot:
instead of the orthographic variations of the adjective in "beau chanson"
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.

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. "ss" remains to mark /s/ as opposed to /z/,
and "ll" is retained and given the Standard Spanish value of [j].

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".

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". 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.

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."

A quick sample text:

"Le quatorce juillet et la fete nationale de la France. Al jour d hui, les
drapels tricolores sont partout."

"Excusez moi, quele hore et il? Il et huit hore moin quart."

Thanks to ye Francophones for tolerating this so far,
Óskar :)

PS my spelling schemes are as much humorous as dead-serious. Please do not
have strong feelings about anything I write of this kind :)"

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