Re: French -ois (jara: YAC: Widse -- a conlang based on Ygyde)

En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>
> Wasn't the ending |-ois| originally pronounced [we] in Old French?
Yes indeed. It's at the point that the divergence began, with some /wE/ losing
their labialisation and becoming /E/, while others stayed /wE/ and eventually
became /wa/.

> 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).
>
You are rigth indeed. There is evidence that /wE/ was still the normal
pronunciation of |oi| during the revolution. And of course in Quebec the /wE/
pronunciation is normal (in France too in countryside dialects, which is quite
funny since at the time /wE/ was normal, the pronunciation /wa/ already existed
but was considered low-level countryside dialect ;))) ).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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