Re: French spelling scheme

En réponse à ´aqratIyo´ <horsch@...>:

> Hi!
>
> I'm new to this list.
Welcome!

> >
> > ..should also become:
> > "del chateau"
> > "del home"
> > "viel chateau"
> > "viel home"
>
> Then, shouldn't it be "del chatel"?
According to Oskar's transcription, yes it should, but then the first {el} marks
/y/, while the second marks /o/. Two different sounds (so we have an
irregularity here) and neither can be even slightly guessed from the orthography
:) . The silent "l" idea is funny and nice at first, but practically it's pretty
useless.

> The plurals also have silent l's, so it might be "dels" and "als"
> instead of "des" and "aux". I think catalan and occitan have these,
> so if the French people wanted a more logical language, they could
> just go one step further and start learning them ;)
>
Of course not! it's catalan and occitan which are less logical :))) .

>
> > There's no underlying /p/ in "trop" - the sound became utterly
> > silent centuries ago.  But there is indeed an underlying /z/ (not
> > /s/) in "pas" in that it is actually pronounced /paz/ in some
> > contexts.
>
> That's double-s: "pass" -
No, that one -s: "pas": step (or the second part of the negation), pronounced
/pa/ in front of a consonnant and /paz/ in front of a vowel.

>
> At any rate, a spelling reform should abolish the final e, which is
> never pronounced. Verb conjugation would be very much easier that way
>
> passer: je pass, tu pass, il pass,
>         nous passons, vous passez/s, ils pass.
>
But you would lose the very character of French! :)) Long live the silent 'e'!
:)

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr