• Blackout@fedia.io
    0·
    2 months ago

    I live in a city founded by the French and nothing is pronounced the French way. Can’t win.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 months ago
        • St. Louis?
        • Louisville?
        • Lafayette?
        • Versailles?
        • Detroit?
        • Baton Rouge?
        • Boise?
        • Montpelier?
        • Montclair?
        • Des Moines?
        • Eau Claire?

        There are a lot of them. If you look at a map of North America circa 1950 you’ll see that the vast majority of the interior is French territory. The only reason that it’s under American control now is that the British took it from the French in the 7 years war. The British colonists in North America were so grateful for this additional land that when they settled it, they generously paid taxes to the British to pay them back for the expensive war to conquer this territory… ha, just kidding. They rebelled and simply took the territory for themselves.

  • PattyMcB@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    Seriously… I speak English and some Spanish. French pronunciation is confusing as fuck. No wonder the English have always attacked them, lol

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Is there a high-level explanation of how that clusterfuck happened? I mean, all the roman languages around France are fairly reasonable in their spelling.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      The pronunciation of words evolved but the spelling of most words didn’t.

      Like the Great Vowel Shift in English

      • Drusas@fedia.io
        0·
        2 months ago

        Or the much earlier h to k shift (think shirt --> skirt).

        To be clear, the spelling did change with that one. I just find it interesting.

    • thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      2 months ago

      Maybe it’s been around longer than the others? Italian is pretty consistent with pronunciation, but modern Italian is a relatively recent language

    • hmonkey@lemy.lolEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      People used to pronounce all the letters and then over time they got lazy and stopped pronouncing everything

      • Acamon@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        And they have actually removed some of them. The ê in forêt indicates it used to be spelled forest but that was so long ago that they’re willing to admit it’s not necessary. Unlike the k in knife, what would we do without that!

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          Me: “I’d like to buy a nif, please.”
          Store clerk: “You sure you don’t want some vowels instead?”

    • Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      There is an old explanation for this. I asked my French teacher a while ago.

      The old French language was written like you pronounce it. During the renaissance, they got into classicism and made the language resemble Latin. Hence tan became temps from the Latin tempus.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 months ago

        The Latin thing is only a partial explanation. Some of it is changes in pronunciation coupled with a very authoritarian attitude to orthography. Few languages out there that changed so little in 400 years.

        So for instance the -ent ending for plural verbs (“ils mangent”) is silent because the “ent” sounds were progressively dropped. Then the written suffix logically started disappearing, and only then did the Académie bring it back because it was more Latin. If it wasn’t for these reactionary fucks that rule would have been reformed centuries ago.

        Unfortunately in the intervening time, knowledge of orthography became a very strong social marker. Because spelling French is so hard, the dictée came to disproportionately affect grades (seriously, old-fashioned schools still do it daily and it’s all graded and very severely), which coupled with the industrial revolution and alphabetization of the lower classes meant that shit spelling = prole = bad. So now orthography is at the center of the traditional value system which has all the conservatives pearl-clutching at the idea that children can’t spell “nénuphar” properly. Children’s purported inability to spell properly is like the number one moral panic that has sprung up every few years for the last century or two, but also orthographic reforms are woke (derogatory). The point of orthography, to conservative types, is for it to be hard so you can show off your perfect spelling to justify your social standing.