French exhibits perhaps the most extensive phonetic changes (from Latin) of any of the Romance languages. Similar changes are seen in some of the northern Italian regional languages, such as Lombard or Ligurian. Most other Romance languages are significantly more conservative phonetically, with Spanish, Italian, and especially Sardinian showing the most conservatism, and Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan, and Romanian showing moderate conservatism.[1]
French also shows enormous phonetic changes between the Old French period and the modern language. Spelling, however, has barely changed, which accounts for the wide differences between current spelling and pronunciation. Some of the most profound changes have been:
The loss of almost all final consonants.
The occasional elision of final /ə/, which caused many newly-final consonants.
The loss of the formerly strong stress that had characterized the language throughout much of its history and triggered many of the phonetic changes.
Significant transformations in the pronunciation of vowels, especially nasal vowels.
Only some of the changes are reflected in the orthography, which generally corresponds to the pronunciation of c. 1100–1200 CE (the Old French period) rather than modern pronunciation.
A profound change in very late spoken Latin (Vulgar Latin, the forerunner of all the Romance languages) was the restructuring of the vowel system of Classical Latin. Latin had thirteen distinct vowels: ten pure vowels (long and short versions of a, e, i, o, u), and three diphthongs (ae, oe, au).[2] What happened to Vulgar Latin is set forth in the table.[3]
Essentially, the ten pure vowels were reduced to the seven vowels /aɛeiɔou/, and vowel length was no longer a distinguishing feature. The diphthongs ae and oe fell in with /ɛ/ and /e/, respectively. Au was retained, but various languages (including Old French) eventually turned it into /ɔ/ after the original /ɔ/ fell victim to further changes.[citation needed]
The Gallo-Romance pronunciation reconstructions reflect Latin verb forms.
French first-person plural forms (with the exception of past historic) are not necessarily inherited from Latin, instead they are probably borrowed from Frankish suffix *-ōmês, instead of yielding *chantens.
The French second-person plural imperative is not inherited from the Latin form with the same function, instead it is supplied by either second-person plural indicative or subjunctive present; compare chante — chantez, but aie — ayez (subjunctive present of avoir), note vouille – vouillez (alternative imperative forms of vouloir); as they have -ez instead of the expected *chanté (this form would be the past participle).
The complex but regular French sound changes have caused irregularities in the conjugation of Old French verbs, like stressed stems caused by historic diphthongization (amer, aim, aimes, aime, aiment, but amons, amez), or regular loss of certain phonemes (vivre, vif, vis, vit). Later in Modern French, these changes were limited to fewer irregular verbs. Modern French also had lost the class of rather unpredictable -ier verbs (resulting from ejection of /j/ into the infinitive suffix -āre, which still exists in some langues d'oïl), having been replaced by simple -er verbs plus -i instead, as in manier, but Old French laissier → laisser.
Vowel length became automatically determined by syllable structure, with stressed open syllables having long vowels and other syllables having short vowels. Furthermore, the stress on accented syllables became more pronounced in Vulgar Latin than in Classical Latin. That tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. That especially applied to the new long vowels, many of which broke into diphthongs but with different results in each daughter language.[citation needed]
Old French underwent more thorough alterations of its sound system than did the other Romance languages. Vowel breaking is observed to some extent in Spanish and Italian: Vulgar Latin focu(s) "fire" (in Classical Latin, "hearth") becomes Italian fuoco and Spanish fuego. In Old French, it went even further than in any other Romance language; of the seven vowels inherited from Vulgar Latin, only /i/ remained unchanged in stressed open syllables:[citation needed]
The sound of Latin short e, turning to /ɛ/ in Proto-Romance, became ie in Old French: Latin mel, "honey" > OF miel
The sound of Latin short o > Proto-Romance /ɔ/ > OF uo, later ue: cor > cuor > cuer, "heart"
Latin long ē and short i > Proto-Romance /e/ > OF ei: habēre > aveir, "to have"; this later becomes /oi/ in many words, as in avoir
Latin long ō and short u > Proto-Romance /o/ > OF ou, later eu: flōrem > flour, "flower"
Latin a, ā > Proto-Romance /a/ > OF /e/, probably through an intervening stage of /æ/; mare > mer, "sea". That change also characterizes the Gallo-Italic languages of Northern Italy (cf. Bolognese [mɛːr]).
Furthermore, all instances of Latin long ū > Proto-Romance /u/ became /y/, the lip-rounded sound that is written u in Modern French. That occurred in both stressed and unstressed syllables, regardless of whether open or closed.
Latin au did not share the fate of /ɔ/ or /o/; Latin aurum > OF or, "gold": not *œur nor *our. Latin au must have been retained at the time such changes were affecting Proto-Romance.
Changes affecting consonants were also quite pervasive in Old French. Old French shared with the rest of the Vulgar Latin world the loss of final -M. Old French also dropped many internal consonants when they followed the strongly stressed syllable; Latin petram > Proto-Romance */ˈpɛðra/ > OF pierre; cf. Spanish piedra ("stone").
Table of Old French outcomes of Latin vowels
Letter
Classical Latin
Vulgar Latin
Proto- Western Romance
Early Old French (through early 12th c.)
Later Old French (from late 12th c.)
closed
open
closed
open
a
/a/
/a/
⟨a⟩/a/
⟨e, ie⟩/æ,iə/
⟨a⟩/a/
⟨e, ie⟩/ɛ,jɛ/
ā
/aː/
ae
/ai/
/ɛ/
⟨e⟩/ɛ/
⟨ie⟩/iə/
⟨e⟩/ɛ/
⟨ie⟩/jɛ/
e
/e/
oe
/oi/
/e/
/e/
⟨e⟩/e/
⟨ei⟩/ei/
⟨oi⟩/oi/>/wɛ/
ē
/eː/
i
/i/
/ɪ/
y
/y/
ī
/iː/
/i/
⟨i⟩/i/
ȳ
/yː/
au
/aw/
/aw/
⟨o⟩/ɔ/
o
/o/
/ɔ/
⟨o⟩/ɔ/
⟨uo⟩/uə/
⟨o⟩/ɔ/
⟨ue⟩/wɛ/>/ø/
ō
/oː/
/o/
/o/
⟨o⟩/o/
⟨ou⟩/ou/
⟨o(u)⟩/u/
⟨eu⟩/eu/>/ø/
u
/u/
/ʊ/
ū
/uː/
/u/
⟨u⟩/y/
In some contexts, /oi/ became /e/, still written oi in Modern French. During the early Old French period, it was pronounced as the writing suggests, as /oi/ as a falling diphthong: /oi̯/. It later shifted to become rising, /o̯i/, before becoming /o̯e/. The sound developed variously in different varieties of Oïl: most of the surviving languages maintain a pronunciation as /we/, but Literary French adopted a dialectal pronunciation, /wa/. The doublet of français and François in modern French orthography demonstrates the mix of dialectal features.[citation needed]
At some point during the Old French period, vowels with a following nasal consonant began to be nasalized. While the process of losing the final nasal consonant took place after the Old French period, the nasal vowels that characterize Modern French appeared during the period in question.[citation needed]
Table of vowel outcomes
The following table shows the most important modern outcomes of Vulgar Latin vowels, starting from the seven-vowel system of Proto-Western Romance stressed syllables: /a/,/ɛ/,/e/,/i/,/ɔ/,/o/,/u/. The vowels developed differently in different contexts, with the most important contexts being:
"Open" syllables (followed by at most one consonant), where most of the vowels were diphthongized or otherwise modified.
Syllables followed by a palatal consonant. An /i/ usually appeared before the palatal consonant, producing a diphthong, which subsequently evolved in complex ways. There were various palatal sources: Classical Latin /jj/ (e.g. peior[4] "worse"); any consonant followed by a /j/ coming from Latin short /e/ or /i/ in hiatus (e.g. balneum "bath", palātium "palace"); /k/ or /ɡ/ followed by /e/ or /i/ (e.g. pācem "peace", cōgitō "I think"); /k/ or /ɡ/ followed by /a/ and preceded by /a/, /e/ or /i/ (e.g. plāga "wound"); /k/ or /ɡ/ after a vowel in various sequences, such as /kl/,/kr/,/ks/,/kt/,/ɡl/,/ɡn/,/ɡr/ (e.g. noctem "night", veclum < vetulum "old", nigrum "black").
Syllables preceded by a palatal consonant. An /i/ appeared after the palatal consonant, producing a rising diphthong. The palatal consonant could arise in any of the ways just described. In addition, it could stem from an earlier /j/ brought into contact with a following consonant by loss of the intervening vowel: e.g. medietātem > Proto-Romance /mejjeˈtate/ > Gallo-Romance /mejˈtat/ (loss of unstressed vowels) > Proto-French /meiˈtʲat/ (palatalization) > Old French /moiˈtjɛ/ > moitié/mwaˈtje/ "half".
Nasal syllables (followed by an /n/ or /m/), where nasal vowels arose. Nasal syllables inhibited many of the changes that otherwise happened in open syllables; instead, vowels tended to be raised. Subsequently, the following /n/ or /m/ was deleted unless a vowel followed, and the nasal vowels were lowered; but when the /n/ or /m/ remained, the nasal quality was lost, with no lowering of the vowel. This produced significant alternations, such as masculine fin/fɛ̃/ vs. feminine fine/fin/.
Syllables closed by /s/ followed by another consonant. By Old French times, this /s/ was "debuccalized" into /h/, which was subsequently lost, with a phonemic long vowel taking its place. These long vowels remained for centuries, and continued to be indicated by an s, and later a circumflex, with alternations such as bette/bɛt/ "chard" vs. bête (formerly /bɛːt/) "beast" (borrowed from bēstiam). Sometimes the length difference was accompanied by a difference in vowel quality, e.g. mal/mal/ "bad" vs. mâle/mɑːl/ "male" (Latin māsculum < */ˈmaslə/). Phonemic (although not phonetic) length disappeared from Parisian French by the 18th century, but survived regionally (now especially in Belgian French).
Syllables closed by /l/ followed by another consonant (although the sequence -lla- was not affected). The /l/ vocalized to /w/, producing a diphthong, which then developed in various ways.
Syllables where two or more of the above conditions occurred simultaneously, which generally evolved in complex ways. Common examples are syllables followed by both a nasal and a palatal element (e.g. from Latin -neu-, -nea-, -nct-); open syllables preceded by a palatal (e.g. cēram "wax"); syllables both preceded and followed by a palatal (e.g. iacet "it lies"); syllables preceded by a palatal and followed by a nasal (e.g. canem "dog").
The developments in unstressed syllables were both simpler and less predictable. In Proto-Western Romance, there were only five vowels in unstressed syllables: /a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/, as low-mid vowels /ɛ/,/ɔ/ were raised to /e/,/o/. These syllables were not subject to diphthongization and many of the other complex changes that affected stressed syllables. This produced many lexical and grammatical alternations between stressed and unstressed syllables. However, there was a strong tendency (especially beginning in the Middle French period, when the formerly strong stress accent was drastically weakened) to even out these alternations. In certain cases in verbal paradigms an unstressed variant was imported into stressed syllables, but mostly it was the other way around, with the result that in Modern French all of the numerous vowels can appear in unstressed syllables.
Table of modern outcomes of Vulgar Latin vowel combinations
medietātem > Vulgar Latin /mejeˈtate/ > /mejˈtʲate/ > Early Old French /meiˈtiɛθ/3 > Late Old French /moiˈtjɛ/ > moitié/mwaˈtje/ "half"; cārum > Old French chier/tʃjɛr/ > cher/ʃɛʁ/ "dear"
^1 "Context" refers to the syllable context at the Vulgar Latin or Gallo-Romance stage. The contexts are as follows:
An "open" context is a stressed syllable followed by at most a single consonant at the Vulgar Latin stage.
A "closed" context is any other syllable type (unstressed, or followed by two or more consonants).
A "late closed" context is a context that is open at the Vulgar Latin (Proto-Romance) stage but becomes closed in the Gallo-Romance stage due to loss an unstressed vowel (usually /e/ or /o/ in a final syllable).
A "palatal" context is a stressed syllable where the preceding consonant has a palatal quality, causing a yod/j/ to be generated after the preceding consonant, before the stressed vowel.
Changes that occurred due to contexts that developed during the Old French stage or later are indicated in the "Modern French" column. In particular, "+#" indicates a word-final context in modern French, which generally evolved due to loss of a final consonant in Old French or Middle French. For example, loss of /θ/ in aimé "loved" (originally /aiˈmɛθ/) occurred in Old French, while loss of /t/ in sot "silly" occurred in Middle French (hence its continuing presence in spelling, which tends to reflect later Old French).
^2 Both /œ/ and /ø/ occur in modern French, and there are a small number of minimal pairs, e.g. jeune/ʒœn(ə)/ "young" vs. jeûne/ʒøn(ə)/[ʒøːn(ə)] "fast (abstain from food)". In general, however, /ø/ only occurs word-finally, before /z/, and usually before /t/, while /œ/ occurs elsewhere.
^3 However, the sequences */wɛw/ from multiple origins regularly dissimilate to /jɛw/ (and later /jœ/,/jø/) except after labials and velars (Latin locus → /lwɛw/ → lieu/ljø/, but *volet → /vwɛwθ/ → veut/vø/).[7]
^4 The changes producing French moitié/mwaˈtje/ were approximately as follows:
medietātem (Classical Latin form)
/medjeˈtaːtẽː/ (pronunciation c. 1st century BC)
/mejjeˈtaːtẽː/ (1st century AD: /dj/ > /jj/)
/mɛjjɛˈtaːteː/ (2nd century AD, Proto-Romance)
/mɛjˈtaːte/ (3rd century AD: loss of intertonic /e/, loss of vowel quantity, new lengthening under stress)
/mɛjˈtʲaːte/ (3rd century AD: late palatalization of /t/ by preceding /j/)
/mejˈtʲaːde/ (4th century AD: first lenition of second /t/, but first one protected by preceding consonant /j/; raising of /ɛ/ to [e] in unstressed syllables)
/mejˈtʲede/ (5th century AD, Gallo-Romance)
/mejˈtʲieðe/ (5th century AD)
/mejˈtʲieð/ (7th century AD: loss of final unstressed /e/)
/mejˈtieθ/ (9th century AD, Early Old French: final devoicing)
/mejˈtie/ (11th century AD loss of dentals)
/mɔiˈtje/ (12th century AD, Later Old French)
/mueˈtje/ (12th century AD)
/mweˈtje/ (12th century AD)
/mwɛˈtje/ (13th century AD)
/mwaˈtje/ (18th century AD, Classical French and Modern French) <moitié>
Chronological history
From Classical Latin through Proto-Italo-Western Romance [when?]
Loss of final /m/ (except in monosyllables: Modern French rien < rem).
/ns/ > /s/. The preceding vowel was long as a result of compensatory lengthening (already in Classical Latin).
/rs/ > /ss/ in some words (dorsum > Vulgar Latin *dossu > Modern French dos) but not others (ursum > Modern French ours).
Introduction of prosthetic short /i/ before words beginning with /s/ + consonant, becoming closed /e/ with the Romance vowel change (Spanish espina, Modern French épine "thorn, spine" < espine < spīnam).
Vulgar Latin unstressed vowel loss: Loss of intertonic (unstressed and in an interior syllable) vowels between /k/, /ɡ/ and /r/, /l/.
Final /-er/ > /-re/, /-or/ > /-ro/ (Spanish cuatro, sobre < quattuor, super).
Reduction of ten-vowel system to seven vowels (see table); diphthongs ae and oe reduced to /ɛ/ and /e/; maintenance of /au/ diphthong.
Reduction of /e/ and /i/ in hiatus to /j/, followed by palatalization of the resulting consonant + /j/ sequences.
Palatalization of /k/ and /ɡ/ before front vowels.
/kj/ is apparently doubled to /kkj/ prior to palatalization.
/dʲ/ and /ɡʲ/ (from /dj/, /ɡj/, and /ɡ/ before a front vowel) become /j/.
/kʲ/ and /tʲ/ merge, becoming /tsʲ/ (still treated as a single sound).
/kt/ > /jt/ and /ks/ > /js/; first going through /xt/ and /xs/, respectively.
First diphthongization (only in some dialects): diphthongization of /ɛ/, /ɔ/ to /ie/, /uo/ (later, /uo/ > /ue/) in stressed, open syllables. That also happens in closed syllables before a palatal, often later absorbed: peior >> /ˈpejro/ > /ˈpiejro/ >> pire "worst"; noctem > /ˈnojte/ > /ˈnuojte/ >> /nujt/nuit; but tertium > /ˈtertsʲo/ >> tierz.
First lenition (did not happen in a small area around the Pyrenees): chain shift involving intervocalic or word-final consonants: voiced stops and unvoiced fricatives become voiced fricatives (/ð/, /v/, /j/); unvoiced stops become voiced stops. /tsʲ/ (from /k(e,i)/, /tj/) is pronounced as a single sound and voiced to /dzʲ/, but /ttsʲ/ (from /kk(e,i)/, /kj/) is geminate and so is not voiced. Consonants before /r/ are lenited, also, and /pl/ > /bl/. Final /t/ and /d/ when following a vowel are lenited.
/jn/ and /nj/ (from Vulgar Latin /ɡn/ and /ŋɡʲ/, respectively) become /ɲ/; /jl/ and /ɡl/ (from Vulgar Latin /ɡl/ and /kl/, respectively) become /ʎ/.
First unstressed vowel loss: Loss of intertonic (unstressed and in an interior syllable) vowels except /a/ when pretonic. That occurred at the same time as the first lenition, and individual words inconsistently show one change before the other. Hence manica > manche but grānica > grange. carricāre becomes either charchier or chargier in Old French. However, in some analyses, the standard for central French was initially for lenition to occur before the unstressed vowel loss, and patterns of the order being reversed, resulting in voiceless consonants, were loaned from the more Frankish-influenced Northern dialects of Normandy, Champagne and Lorrain, eventually spreading to some other words by analogy, leading to known cases of divergent development, such as grange and granche, and venger and (re)vencher (the latter both from Latin vindicāre).[8]
To Early Old French (c. 840)
A new phoneme, /h/, is introduced in borrowings from Germanic languages.
Spread and dissolution of palatalization:
When "protected" (that is, when preceded by a consonant or standing at the start of a word, rather than being preceded by a vowel), the palatal consonant /j/ (which could be derived from /dj/, /ɡj/, /ɡ(eˌi)/, or word-initial /j/) became chiefly /dʒ/ via fortition then affrication: Vulgar Latin /j/ → Late Gallo-Roman /ʝ/ → Early Old French /dʒ/.
A /j/ followed by another consonant tends to palatalize that consonant; the consonants may have been brought together by intertonic loss (medietātem > /mejeˈtate/ > /mejˈtʲate/ > moitié, peior > /ˈpejro/ > /ˈpiejrʲe/ > pire, but impeiorāre > /empejˈrare/ > /empejˈrʲare/ > /empejˈriɛr/ > OF empoirier "to worsen").
Palatalized sounds lose their palatal quality and eject a /j/ into the end of the preceding syllable, when open; also into the beginning of the following syllable when it is stressed, open, and front (/a/ or /e/): *cugitāre > /kujeˈtare/ > /kujˈdare/ > /kujˈdʲare/ >> /kujˈdiɛr/ OF cuidier "to think". mansiōnātam > /mazʲoˈnada/ > /mazʲˈnada/ > /majzʲˈnjɛðə/ > OF maisniée "household".
/tʃ/ and /dʒ/ (including those from later sources, see below) eject a following /j/ normally but do not eject any preceding /j/.
Double /ssʲ/ < /ssj/ and from various other combinations also ejects a preceding /j/.
Single /dz/ ejects such a /j/, but not double /tts/.
Palatal /ʎ/ does not eject a preceding /j/ (otherwise, it is always absorbed even if depalatalized); palatal /ɲ/ emits a preceding /j/ when depalatalized even if the preceding syllable is closed (ivngit > */ˈjonjet/ > /dʒoɲt/ > /dʒojnt/joint).
Morphemic /-arʲ-/ in inherited words change to /-jer-/ instead of /-ajr-/, hence operārium > /obˈrarʲo/ > /obˈrjero/ (not */obˈrajro/) >> ouvrier "worker".
Palatalized labials internal (in the middle of words) become palatal affricates (/pʲ/ and /fʲ/ > /tʃ/; /bʲ/ and /vʲ/ > /dʒ/; /mʲ/ > /ndʒ/) without emitting a preceding /j/. This development was also seen in Occitan and Ligurian.[9]
Second diphthongization: diphthongization of /e/, /o/, /a/ to /ei/, /ou/, /ae/ in stressed, open syllables, not followed by a palatal sound (not in all Gallo-Romance). (Later on, /ei/ > /oi/, /ou/ > /eu/, /ae/ > /e/; see below.)
Second unstressed vowel loss: Loss of all vowels in unstressed, final syllables, except /a/; addition of a final, supporting /e/ when necessary, to avoid words with impermissible final clusters.
Second lenition: Same changes as in first lenition, applied again (not in all Gallo-Romance). Losses of unstressed vowels may have blocked that change from happening.
Palatalization of /ka/ > /tʃa/, /ɡa/ > /dʒa/.
Further vocalic changes (part 1):
/ae/ > /ɛ/ (but > /jɛ/ after a palatal, and > /aj/ before nasals when not after a palatal).
/au/ > /ɔ/.
Further consonant changes:
Geminate stops become single stops.
Final stops and fricatives become devoiced.
/dz/ > /z/ unless final.
A /t/ is inserted between palatal /ɲ/, /ʎ/ and following /s/ (dolēs > duels "you hurt" but colligis > */ˈkɔljes/ > cuelz, cueuz "you gather"; iungis > */ˈjonjes/ > joinz "you join"; fīlius > filz "son": the z on such words represents /ts/).
Palatal /ɲ/, /ʎ/ are depalatalized to /n/, /l/ when final or following a consonant.
In first-person verb forms, they may remain palatal when final because of the influence of the palatalized subjunctives.
/ɲ/ > /jn/ when depalatalising but /ʎ/ > /l/, without a yod. (*veclum > /ˈvɛlʲo/ > /ˈviɛlʲo/ > viel "old" but cuneum > /ˈkonʲo/ > coin, balneum > /ˈbanjo/ > bain but montāneam > /monˈtanja/ > montagne.)
Diphthongs are consistently rendered as falling diphthongs, the major stress is on the first element, including for /ie/, /ue/, /ui/, etc. in contrast with the normal Spanish pronunciation.
/a/ > /ə/, when word-final.
To Old French, c. 1100
/f/, /p/, /k/ lost before final /s/, /t/. (dēbet > Strasbourg Oathsdift/deift/ > OF doit.)
/ei/ > /oi/ (blocked by nasalization; see below).
/ou/ > /eu/, however this is blocked if a labial consonant follows, in which case the segment remains /ou/, ultimately becoming /u/ later.[10] (lupa > OF louve.)
/wo/ > /we/ (blocked by nasalization; see below).
/a/ develops allophone [ɑ] before /s/, which later develops into a separate phoneme.
Loss of /θ/ and /ð/.[11] When it results in a hiatus of /a/ with a following vowel, the /a/ becomes a schwa /ə/.
Loss of /s/ before voiced consonant (passing first through /h/), with lengthening of preceding vowel. That produces a new set of long vowel phonemes, as is described more completely in the following section.
/u/ > /y/. (This shift, along with the later /o/ > /u/, is an areal feature common to most Gallo-Romance languages.)
Word-final /rn/, /rm/ > /r/ (diurnum > EOF jorn > OF jor; vermem > EOF verm > OF ver; dormit > OF dort).
To Late Old French, c. 1250–1300
Changes here affect oral and nasal vowels alike, unless otherwise indicated.
change
condition
notes
/o/ > /u/
everywhere
/ue/, /eu/ > /œ/
everywhere
Nasal /wɛ̃/ segments, for which there had dialectal variation with nasal /ũ/ previously, are all shifted (or returned) to /ũ/ (ultimately becoming /ɔ̃/) before this can occur.
Rising diphthongs develop when the first element of diphthong is /u/, /y/, /i/.
Stress shifts to second element.
everywhere
Hence /yi/ > [yj] > [ɥi]
/oi/ > /we/
everywhere
Later, /we/ > /ɛ/ in some words like français; note doublet François.
/ai/ > /ɛ/
everywhere
afterward, ⟨ai⟩ is a common spelling of /ɛ/, regardless of origin.
Consonants in coda position word-internally underwent weakening and loss (Gess 1996). This affected /S/ ([z] before voiced consonants and [s] before voiceless ones), /N/ (=nasal consonants), /l/, and to some extent the most sonorous coda consonant, /r/. Syllable-final /S/ reduced to [h] before deleting. Borrowings into English suggest that the process occurred first when the following consonant was voiced but not when it was unvoiced (this explains the English pronunciations isle vs. feast). This process was accompanied by compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. Preconsonantal ⟨s⟩ was retained as a marker of vowel length (sometimes non-etymologically) until being substituted by ⟨ˆ⟩. Syllable-final nasal consonants nasalized and then were absorbed into the preceding vowels, leading to phonemic nasal vowels. Syllable-final /l/ (probably already velarized in this position) vocalized to [w] and fused with the preceding vowel to produce falling diphthongs. Where syllable-final /r/ was weakened and lost word-internally, it was mostly later restored with the notable exception of morphemic -er.
To Middle French, c. 1500
Changes here affect oral and nasal vowels alike, unless otherwise indicated.
au/au/ > /o/.
ei/ei/ > /ɛ/ (the [ei̯] diphthong is maintained in Quebec French: neige "snow" [nei̯ʒ(ə)] or [naɪ̯ʒ(ə)]).
Loss of final consonants before a word beginning with a consonant. That produces a three-way pronunciation for many words (alone, followed by a vowel, followed by a consonant), which is still maintained in the words six "six" and dix "ten" (and until recently neuf "nine"), e.g. dix/dis/ "ten" but dix amis/dizaˈmi/ "ten friends" and dix femmes/diˈfam(ə)/ "ten women".
Subject pronouns start to become mandatory because of loss of phonetic differences between inflections.
Medieval apical s, as in saint, merges into deaffricated c as in ceint, thus merging soft c and s.
Loss of final consonants in a word standing alone. That produces a two-way pronunciation for many words (in close connection with a following word that begins with a vowel), often still maintained: nous voyons/nuvwaˈjɔ̃/ "we see" vs. nous avons/nuzaˈvɔ̃/ "we have". That phenomenon is known as liaison.
oi/we/ > /wa/[14] (see above – To Late Old French) or /ɛ/ (étoit > était; the spelling was not changed until the 19th century). This also affects certain other instances of /we~o̯e/; e.g. moelle/mwal/, poêle/pwɑl/. Change into /ɛ/ is relatively rare in standard French, it occurs notably in the imperfect tense suffixes.
The pronunciation /we/ is preserved in some forms of Quebec and Acadian French, especially by old speakers.
Instances of /h/ were again deleted in the late seventeenth century. The phoneme /h/ had been reintroduced to the language through the absorption of loanwords, primarily of Germanic origin, in which the /h/ was preserved, and these are the /h/ instances that were lost this time around.[15][16] However a Germanic h usually disallows liaison: les halles /le.al(ə)/, les haies /le.ɛ/, les haltes /le.alt(ə)/, whereas a Latin h allows liaison: les herbes /lezɛrb(ə)/, les hôtels /lezotɛl/.
To Modern French, c. 2000
/r/ becomes a uvular sound ("Guttural R"), realized as either a trill /ʀ/ or fricative /ʁ/, in most accents. The alveolar trill is maintained in Acadia, Louisiana, some parts of Québec and in Francophone Africa.
Merger of /ʎ/ (spelled il in œil and travail) into /j/, which had begun in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reaches completion around the beginning of the nineteenth century[17] (see Mouillé)
Elision of final /ə/, and occasionally of /ə/ elsewhere, unless a sequence of three consonants would be produced (such constraints operate over multiword sequences of words that are syntactically connected). Occitan French tends to be more conservative, while the elision of final /ə/ does not occur in Francophone Africa.
Changing use of liaison, which overall becomes rarer.
In Metropolitan French, gradual merging of /œ̃/ and /ɛ̃/, both are realized as [æ̃], but the distinction is maintained in Southern France, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme /ɑ/, merged with /a/, both are realized as [ä], but the distinction is maintained in French Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme /ə/, merged with /ø/, both are realized as [ø], but the distinction is maintained in Quebec French.
In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme /ɛː/, merged with /ɛ/, both are realized as [ɛ], but the distinction is maintained in Northern French, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
In Metropolitan French, merger of /ɔ/ into /o/ when word-final, but the distinction is maintained in Belgian French.
Nasalization
Nasalization of vowels before /n/ or /m/ occurred gradually over several hundred years, beginning with the low vowels, possibly as early as 900, and finishing with the high vowels, possibly as late as c. 1300. Numerous changes occurred afterwards that are still continuing.
The following steps occurred during the Old French period:
Nasalization of /a/, /e/, /ɔ/ before /n/ or /m/ (originally, in all circumstances, including when a vowel followed).
Nasalization occurs before and blocks the changes /ei/ > /oi/ and /ou/ > /eu/. However, the sequence /õĩ/ occurs because /oi/ has more than one origin: coin "corner" < cvnevm. The sequences /ĩẽn/ or /ĩẽm/, and /ũẽn/ or /ũẽm/, also occur, but the last two occur in only a few words, in each case alternating with a non-diphthongized variant: om or uem (ModF on), and bon or buen (ModF bon). The version without the diphthong apparently arose in unstressed environments and is the only one that survived.
Lowering of /ẽ/ and /ɛ̃/ to [æ̃] but not in the sequences /jẽ/ and /ẽj/: bien, plein. The realization of /ẽ/ to [æ̃] probably occurred during the 11th or early 12th century and did not affect Old Norman or Anglo-Norman. Ultimately [æ̃] merged into /ã/.
Nasalization of /i/, /u/, /y/ before /n/ or /m/.
It is not clear if the third-person plural ending -ent contained a nasalized schwa /ə̃/; although the n is consistently kept in writing, by Early Modern French at the latest it had become non-nasal /ə/.
The following steps occurred during the Middle French period:
Lowering of /ũ/ > /õ/ > /ɔ̃/. (/ũ/ usually comes from original /oN/, as original /u/ became /y/.)
Denasalization of vowels before /n/ or /m/ followed by a vowel or semi-vowel. (Examples like femme/fam/ "woman" < OF /ˈfãmə/ < fēminam and donne/dɔn/ "(he) gives" < OF /ˈdũnə/ < dōnat, with lowering and lack of diphthongization before a nasal even when a vowel followed, show that nasalization originally operated in all environments.)
Deletion of /n/ or /m/ after remaining nasal vowels (when preceding a consonant or word-final): dent/dɑ̃/ "tooth" < */dãt/ < OFr dent/dãnt/ < EOFr */dɛ̃nt/ < dentem.
The following steps occurred during the Modern French period:
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.
The phonology of Portuguese varies among dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in intelligibility. This article on phonology focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and Angolan Portuguese (AP) can be considerable, varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.
The history of the Slavic languages stretches over 3000 years, from the point at which the ancestral Proto-Balto-Slavic language broke up into the modern-day Slavic languages which are today natively spoken in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe as well as parts of North Asia and Central Asia.
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic, is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from c. 600 to c. 900. The main contemporary texts are dated c. 700–850; by 900 the language had already transitioned into early Middle Irish. Some Old Irish texts date from the 10th century, although these are presumably copies of texts written at an earlier time. Old Irish is thus forebear to Modern Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong.
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.
Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
French is a Romance language that specifically is classified under the Gallo-Romance languages.
The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.
The traditional English pronunciation of Latin, and Classical Greek words borrowed through Latin, is the way the Latin language was traditionally pronounced by speakers of English until the early 20th century.
In historical linguistics, Bartsch's law or the Bartsch effect is the name of a sound change that took place in the early history of the langues d'oïl, for example in the development of Old French.
This article describes the phonology of the Occitan language.
Proto-Slavic is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th century AD. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages.
Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is itself descended ultimately from Proto-Uralic.
The phonology of Old Saxon mirrors that of the other ancient Germanic languages, and also, to a lesser extent, that of modern West Germanic languages such as English, Dutch, Frisian, German, and Low German.
As a member of the dialect continuum of Romance languages, Catalan displays linguistic features similar to those of its closest neighbors. The following features represent in some cases unique changes in the evolution of Catalan from Vulgar Latin; other features are common in other Romance-speaking areas.
The Proto-Slavic language, the hypothetical ancestor of the modern-day Slavic languages, developed from the ancestral Proto-Balto-Slavic language, which is the parent language of the Balto-Slavic languages. The first 2,000 years or so consist of the pre-Slavic era, a long period during which none of the later dialectal differences between Slavic languages had yet happened. The last stage in which the language remained without internal differences that later characterize different Slavic languages can be dated around AD 500 and is sometimes termed Proto-Slavic proper or Early Common Slavic. Following this is the Common Slavic period, during which the first dialectal differences appeared but the entire Slavic-speaking area continued to function as a single language, with sound changes tending to spread throughout the entire area. By around 1000, the area had broken up into separate East Slavic, West Slavic and South Slavic languages, and in the following centuries it broke up further into the various modern Slavic languages of which the following are extant: Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian in the East; Czech, Slovak, Polish, Kashubian and the Sorbian languages in the West, and Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian in the South.
The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions.
Proto-Romance is the comparatively reconstructed ancestor of the Romance languages. It is effectively Late Latin viewed retrospectively through its descendants.
Old Irish was affected by a series of phonological changes that radically altered its appearance compared with Proto-Celtic and older Celtic languages. The changes occurred at a fairly rapid pace between 350 and 550 CE.
↑ The changes occurred in the majority of Vulgar Latin, specifically the Italo-Western Romance area, which underlies the vast majority of Romance languages spoken in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Andorra. However, different vowel changes occurred elsewhere, in the Vulgar Latin underlying modern Romanian, Sardinian, Corsican, and a few modern southern Italian varieties.
↑ Found as pēior "worse" in many 19th and 20th century editions, but was actually pronounced /ˈpej.jor/, with a short /e/ followed by a geminate /jj/; writing the macron is a convention to mark the resulting syllable weight.
↑ Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Page 183 section 481
↑ Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Page 183 section 481.
↑ Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Section 556.
↑ Deborah L. Arteaga. Research on Old French: The State and the Art. pp.162–164.
↑ Operstein, Natalie. Consonant Structure and Prevocalization. Pages 109-110, 112-118
↑ Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Page 185, Section 489.
↑ Robert McColl Miller; Larry Trask (20 February 2015). Trask's Historical Linguistics. Routledge. ISBN9781317541769. Between the fifth and eighth centuries, French borrowed a number of Germanic words with [h]... and [h] thus rejoined the French phonological system... the [h]s had disappeared by the eighteenth century.
↑ Mooney, Damien; Hawkey, James (2019). "The variable palatal lateral in Occitan and Catalan: linguistic transfer or regular sound change?". Journal of French Language Studies. 29: 286.
Bibliography
Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1980), From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts, Georgetown University Press, ISBN978-0878400775
Gess, Randall (1996) Optimality Theory in the Historical Phonology of French. PhD dissertation, University of Washington
Harris, Martin (1988), "French", in Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (eds.), The Romance Languages, Oxford University Press, pp.209–245, ISBN978-0195208290
Kibler, William (1984), Introduction to Old French, Modern Language Association of America, ISBN978-0873522922
Price, Glanville (1971), French Language: Present and Past, Jameson Books, ISBN978-0844800356
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