----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan van Steenbergen" <ijzeren_jan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 7:12 PM
Subject: French -ois (jara: YAC: Widse -- a conlang based on Ygyde)
> --- Christophe skrzypszy:
>
> > You got it the wrong way round. Originally they were both spelt
"françois"
> > and "danois" (the first one is kept in the first name François,
pronounced
> > with /wa/, another proof of the randomness of this change :)) ), but
> > "françois"
> > became spelt "français" to follow the sound. In the same way, the
imperfect
> > endings in French used to be spelt "-ois, -oit, -oient" (now
"-ais, -ait, -
> > aient"). It's the reason why English has "conoisseur" for French
> > "connaisseur".
> > They borrowed it before the spelling reform ;))) .
>
> Wasn't the ending |-ois| originally pronounced [we] in Old French?
Perhaps. At least I've already noticed that the personal pronouns "moi"
/mwa/ (= me) and "toi" /twa/ (= singular you) are sometimes pronounced /mwE/
and /twE/ in Quebec and in some Walloon dialects.
> That's at
> least what I remember from the year when I studied musicology (and my
favourite
> subject was Medieval music, especially Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars
> Subtilior).
>
> Jan
>
> =====
> "Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones
>
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