--- In conlang@y..., Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@F...> wrote:
> I was talking about [E] indeed! Just saying that to mark a [E], French had to
> resort to many more different ways than to mark a [e], implying that since
> what's felt simple is marked less than what's felt not simple, by French
> standards [e] had to be felt simpler than [E] (but all this is quite tongue-in-
> cheek of course :)) ).
French doesn't "resort" to these spellings to represent /E/. You're
getting the causality wrong. Rather, all these spellings (which used
to be different sounds in Old French) converged into the gravity well
of /E/. Only very few constellations could hold up against entropy
and keep their energy-intensive sound of /e/. ;-)
> > > Oops! The second one was never ever pronounced that way. [robinE] is
> > an old
> > > pronunciation that died more then one century ago
> >
> > Then I wonder why it's taught at our schools.
> >
>
> Because the people who teach you never put a foot in France? :))
It sounds to me as if by "France" you mean your immediate
neighborhood. The Académie Française and my edition of Le Robert
insist on /rObinE/. =)
-- Christian Thalmann