Re: OT: Nasalization of French Vowels

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Peterson" <ThatBlueCat@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 6:19 AM
Subject: Re:       Re: OT: Nasalization of French Vowels


> Thanks everyone for your input.   A question for Christophe: Does this
mean
> that, in French, nasalized vowels and nasal codas are in complimentary
> distribution?   That is, you can have:
>
> [bO]
> [bO~]
> [bOn]
>
> But never:
>
> [bO~n]
>
> If so, that's very interesting.
>
I'm not Christophe but I'll answer anyway.

That's true for standard French and I think for most of it's European
"dialects".
But some persons (e.g. some Belgians) use [E~n] in words ending in "aine" or
"enne". For example my mother (and I too when I was a child) says [fo~tE~n]
for |Fontaine| which is pronounced [fO~tEn] or [fo~tEn] in standard French.

Notice BTW that I don't know any word which is pronounced [bO]. |Beau| is
pronounced [bo].


Jean-François Colson
jfcolson@belgacom.net