Re: Silent E
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, October 5, 2001, 7:12 |
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En réponse à Colin Halverson <CHalvrson@...>:
> Do any other languages (I am sure there are at least a few) have a
> silent
> letter or especially a silent modifying letter (as in English "ate", the
> e is
> silent and makes the a long)??? Where does this come from?? Do any of
> ur
> conlangs have this??
>
French has the silent 'e' too, but in French it serves to show that the
previous consonnant is prononced. It also marks feminine words in writing.
The 's' can also serve as a silent letter to mark plural, but it gets
pronounced when there is liaison. French is full of letters becoming silent in
some environments. My conlang Narbonósc uses also the silent 'e' and other
silent letters (in its name itself, the 'c' is silent and serves only to mark
that the previous 's' is pronounced).
As for the origin of those silent letters, well, historically they were
pronounced all (even the final 'e' in French was pronounced [@]), but they got
lost through sound changes and the orthography didn't follow the new
pronunciation but stayed the way it was (orthography is usually more
conservative than speech).
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr