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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
French phonology is the sound system of French.This article discusses mainly the phonology of all the varieties of Standard French.Notable phonological features include the uvular r present in some accents, nasal vowels, and three processes affecting word-final sounds:
There is conflicting evidence of the date of this sound change. The consonant derived from Latin /k/ before a front vowel seems to have still been a palatalized affricate [dzʲ] or [i̯dz] when the following vowel was lost in a final syllable, resulting in word-final [i̯ts] in Early Old French (spelled "iz"), later simplified to [i̯s].
In native French words, ch represents [ʃ] as in chanson (song). In most words of Greek origin, it represents [k] as in archéologie, chœur, chirographier; but chimie, chirurgie, and chimère have [ʃ], as does anarchiste. In Italian and Romanian, ch represents the voiceless velar plosive [k] before -e and -i.
Silent final consonants may be pronounced, in some syntactic contexts, when the following word begins with a vowel or non-aspirated h. It is important to note that many words with silent final consonants have utterly lost them, e.g. neither the 'n' in million nor the 't' in art is ever pronounced. A liaison should not be made just because a ...
[note 9] For example, letters with a rightward-facing hook at the bottom represent retroflex equivalents of the source letters, and small capital letters usually represent uvular equivalents of their source letters. There are also several letters from the Greek alphabet, though their sound values may differ from Greek.
In English orthography, the letter k normally reflects the pronunciation of [] and the letter g normally is pronounced /ɡ/ or "hard" g , as in goose, gargoyle and game; /d͡ʒ/ or "soft" g , generally before i or e , as in giant, ginger and geology; or /ʒ/ in some words of French origin, such as rouge, beige and genre.
This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of French on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of French in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them.