Re: NATLANG: French spelling questions

 --- Remi Villatel <maxilys@...> wrote: >
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
> > Are there any French words other than _aiguë_
> where
> > an _ë_ is used to indicate that a preceding _u_
> > is pronounced [y]?
>
> Yes, there is one: "ambiguë". We should use "-güe"
> instead which would be
> more logical.
>
> > Are there any French words that contain _gg_
> > pronounced [gZ].  BTW are there any words
> > with [gZ] at all?
>
> I don't think so. No [gZ] but [gz] in French. And if
> I encounter an italian
> word with "gg", I would instinctively pronounce it
> [dZ].
>
> arpeggio [aRpEdZjo]
>
> > I read that the only words where _à_ is used
> > are _à là çà_,
>
> That's true and "çà" is even very seldomly used.
> It's a bit old fashioned.
> ("çà" = "hither".) While "ça" without accent ("that"
> or "this") is very common.
>
> > and _ù_ is used *only* in the
> > word _où_.  Is this correct?
>
> I've never thought about it... but that true. A very
> strange feature of
> French IMHO. There is a reason: To differenciate
> "ou" (or) from "où"
> (where). But that's still strange.
>
> > (Thought: French keyboards oughta have a key
> > for the whole _où_ sequence! :)
>
> No, we already have "à" and "ù" directly accessible
> also they are so rare in
> French. That's well known that the keyboards follow
> a strange logic of their
> own.
Yeah, but the idea is that the `u key is only used in
the word o`u, so why not have a key *for* the word
o`u, instead of for it sometimes?

> You should have spoken about the 101 ways to write
> [o] in French.  ;-)
/o:/ in my idiolect of Australian English, showing
counter-examples after 'vs':
 - a (water/call vs what /O/),
 - al (walk/talk vs album /&l/),
 - ar (war/quarter vs bar /a:/),
 - au (auburn/faun vs fault /Vu/ vs caustic /O/),
 - augh (caught/taught vs laugh /a:f/),
 - aul (caulk/Caulfield vs maul /o:l/),
 - aw (saw/law vs awry /@/),
 - oa (broad vs road /Vu/),
 - oar (boar/soar),
 - oor (poor/door)
 - or (cord, cork vs story /o:r/ vs orange /Or/),
 - ore (lore, sore)
 - our (court vs our /&u/),
 - uar (quart vs quarter /wo:/)
 - ure (sure vs pure /ji\u\w@/).
(Note the number of homophones, too. /ko:t/ seems to
be particu'ly bad.)

That looks like 15, which isn't quite french's 101,
but I'm guessing that's an exaggeration :P I might've
forgotten a couple, too. There are others I could
include, but won't because they're cheating (e.g. hors
in hors d'oeuvre, which probably also has the oddest
spelling of /8:/ at <oeu> and /v/ as <vr>). But
anyway, it looks like the only reliable spellings are
<oar> and <oor> and <ore>, the latter of which is less
reliable because it relies on an unreliable
orthographic habit.

(Some of those obviously rely on context: a often
requires a still pronounced rounding consonant (w, l)
before or after it.)

--
Tristan.

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