Re: E and e

En réponse à Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:

>
> That's why I insisted on a front vowel following.
>
But that doesn't change the strangeness of the distribution :) .

>
> I'm afraid the Robert also agrees with me on all
> the examples of "ai" that I quoted in my previous
> post.  =P
Then I dare say the Robert is completely wrong here!

  Seems like the Romands have stayed truer
> to "official" French than the French.  =)
Not at all. "Official" French has only [E] for "ai", without alternation.

  (Unless
> you were to count things like "septante", "oussi",
> "envoir" (for "au revoir") or "qui c'est qui",
> which my mother uses... {I don't.})
>
LOL. "Qui c'est qui" is common in French dialects and baby talk :)) .

> I guess if you're going to use accents anyway, you
> might as well choose the one that matches the
> pronunciation, thus è -> é.  Changing ai -> é
> would be a harsher intrusion though, which might
> be why it's not done in Academic French.
>
It's not done because it's not how it's pronounced, that's all. The accent
change has *already* been done for those where the alternation exists. It's
just that the alternation appeared early, when "ai" still represented a
diphtongue. And when "ai" monophtonguised, it did into [E], without alternation.

> Does Academic French represent an older stage in
> the development of the language, or simply a
> dialect that was made official?
Academic French represents only the written language (along with a
pronunciation guide), which can be indeed considered to be an archaising form
of French.

  In the former
> case, it would seem as if the contemporary French
> were "retro-engineered" to fit the orthography,
> since è is treated differently from ai, although
> they both represent /E/.
It is *not* treated differently. It just happens that the /E/ written "ai" and
the /E/ written "è" have different origins, and thus a different behaviour is
just normal. Contemporary French has not been "retro-engineered". It just
followed its normal evolution, and we are in a case where the orthographic
differences are actually useful.

  IIRC, linguistic
> evolution isn't supposed to be aware of notation.
>
Not completely true. But the point here is that it's indeed unaware of the
notation. It just happens that the notation fits well the evolution here.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.