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Re: French reform (Re: C.Thalmann, & #1)

From:Jean-François Colson <fa597525@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 10:24
> You could simply put the feminine form in the dictionary. That way > you'd only have a few irregular adjectives, which didn't remove the > final consonant in the masculine (before consonants).
But there's also the problem of the "liaison": |un grand homme| is pronounced /9~ gRA~t Om/ whereas |un homme grand| is pronounced /9~n Om gRA~/. Therefore you'd need to put three forms in the dictionary. But even in the standard orthography there are some irregular feminines: favori/favorite, dissous/ dissoute etc.
> > Still, French doesn't need a massive reform. Its pronunciation is > largely predictable from its spelling.
But the spelling is not predictable at all from the pronunciation. That's the starting point of most of the more serious reform proposals. I'd appreciate a reform based on the IPA, but the one I proposed is a little exaggerated.
> But I would like the word 'fils' > to be spelt 'fisse'. Am I right in thinking that 'fils' is one of the > few nouns that comes from the direct (rather than the oblique) case in > French?
Perhaps. That's filus without the u.