I’m curious where the ‘s’ was dropped first, in speech or writing? Written French is quite prescriptive with phonetics so I would guess it dropped from spoken language first? (And each little ‘hat’ is just a ‘tip of the hat’ to the lost letter? (Ok, I’ll see myself out lol))
Comment on Languages
pedz@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
And when the letters are removed, French still lets you know there was a letter at some point by putting a little hat on top of the preceding letter. It makes learning it even funnier.
Forêt and forest. Arrêt and arrest. Hôpital and hospital.
As a native French speaker this may be the laziest part to me. We still say someone was hoSpitalisé, in a hôpital. People can be défeneStrés through fenêtres. Someone can be arrêté through arrestation.
Lots of hidden pains and treasures. When I was a kid I thought learning all this shit was pointless. We should just reform everything and spell like we speak. But then I also learned to appreciate the evolution of the language and why wasp and guêpe have the same roots.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
pedz@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Indeed. According to a literary website from Lyon’s library, the s was not pronounced in certain words well before we stopped writing them. Apparently it took a few centuries to introduce the circumflex.
Bien que la graphie ait longtemps gardé la présence de ce /s/, on ne le prononçait plus depuis bien avant qu’on ne décide, au XVIIIe siècle (dès l’édition de 1740 du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française), de noter cet amuïssement par le recours systématique à l’accent circonflexe. L’amuïssement du /s/ en position appuyante date pourtant d’après 1066.
Or in English
Although the spelling retained the /s/ for a long time, it had ceased to be pronounced well before the decision was made in the 18th century (starting with the 1740 edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy) to systematically indicate this elision through the use of the circumflex accent. The elision of the /s/ in stressed position, however, dates back to after 1066.
That would be very typical of French. Spoken French is well in advance on the written form. Hence the jokes at its expense.
Maybe in a few other centuries we’ll have made a few other reforms to match what’s written with what we’re saying, but I think most of us kind of like that. The written form is the glue that holds all the varieties of French together and writing formal French also makes one feel a bit smug.
Gutek8134@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Let me introduce you to slavic languages, where AFAIK it’s the rule, not exception
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Same for Estonian, which is why we need umlauts for letters that don’t exist in many other languages’ versions of the latin alphabet. But since we’re special snowflakes, we also have õ, which is such an uncommon letter in the world that we have a border sign on our biggest island to signify where the language border exists: On the mainland and most places we use õ, but people on Saaremaa people will use ö instead because they’re behind the times.
We also have ž and š but they’re a bit less special, many european languages use them. Because how would you even know how to pronounce gelatine without writing it as želatiin?
AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social 6 days ago
Couple of years ago I learned Estonian has letters ž and š, and as a Balkan Slav it made me excited (I’m weird) 😂
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’s not a rule in Slovene but pretty much any word is spelled the way you would pronounce it.