NEW-INSERT LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION for "1694acad"

John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
Wed Mar 21 18:29:46 CET 2007


Marion Gunn scripsit:

> Wondering how long before 'françoise' became 'française', 

The spelling change came in 1835, but the pronunciation change was several
centuries before that.  Originally all these words with written "oi"
were pronounced "wE" (E = epsilon, e-grave, e in English bed).  In some,
such as "roide" < Latin RIGIDA, the w-sound was lost; in others, such as
"froide" < Latin FRIGIDA, the w-sound was preserved.  Around the time
of the Revolution, the remaining words in "wE" shifted to "wa", but
the existing words with just "E" were unaffected.  There is no obvious
reason why certain words changed and others did not: compare francais
and Francois, or for that matter English swore and sword, or inward
and innards.

-- 
It was impossible to inveigle           John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Into offering the slightest apology
For his Phenomenology.                      --W. H. Auden, from "People" (1953)


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