(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

GrandPiano wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:18
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:15
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I mean the letters that end in /e/. "b", "c", "d" etc. all end in /e/ and in other languages they all rhyme with "e" (like English /diː/ and /iː/, German and even original Latin /deː/ and /eː/), so I'm just wondering why "e" is somehow /ə~œ/.
Probably because /ə/ is the most common pronunciation of <e> in French (I don't think /œ/ is accurate... perhaps you meant [ɵ̞], which might be a more accurate transcription of French /ə/?).

Also note that, at least according to Wikipedia, those consonant letters are written <bé>, <cé>, <dé>, etc., with an acute accent, when spelled out.
Whether it's accurate or not, Wikipedia uses [œ] as a possible pronunciation of /ə/.
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Post by Lao Kou »

shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I took the question to mean, why is it "a, bé, cé, dé, œ" as opposed to ""a, bé, cé, dé, é". Even English has "(a), bi, si, di, i"
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

Lao Kou wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:26
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I took the question to mean, why is it "a, bé, cé, dé, œ" as opposed to ""a, bé, cé, dé, é". Even English has "(a), bi, si, di, i"
Yeah, that's apparently what ixals meant. I'm not familiar enough with the names of French letters to have known this, so I thought they might have meant that the 5 vowel letters are pronounced as their IPA values in French, except for <e> (which, of course, isn't the case).
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by ixals »

GrandPiano wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:18
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:15
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I mean the letters that end in /e/. "b", "c", "d" etc. all end in /e/ and in other languages they all rhyme with "e" (like English /diː/ and /iː/, German and even original Latin /deː/ and /eː/), so I'm just wondering why "e" is somehow /ə~œ/.
Probably because /ə/ is the most common pronunciation of <e> in French (I don't think /œ/ is accurate... perhaps you meant [ɵ̞], which might be a more accurate transcription of French /ə/?).

Also note that, at least according to Wikipedia, those consonant letters are written <bé>, <cé>, <dé>, etc., with an acute accent, when spelled out.
That makes sense. I just would have expected it to be pronounced as /e/ following all the other letters and languages, especially because /ə/ doesn't exist in "stressed" syllables (at least I don't know of any words where it does?). It always felt a bit strange to me. So "e" being pronounced as /ə/ definitely isn't a natural change from Latin "e" /eː/ and was a French innovation. Quite obvious if that's really the case.

Also, I always saw the actual pronunciation of /ə/ being described as "like the eu in heure (or other words with /œ/)" so I used /œ/.

Lao Kou wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:26 I took the question to mean, why is it "a, bé, cé, dé, œ" as opposed to ""a, bé, cé, dé, é". Even English has "(a), bi, si, di, i"
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I just need to step up my game at describing/explaining things more clearly, I guess. [:P]
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:50 Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I just need to step up my game at describing/explaining things more clearly, I guess. [:P]
Well, it seems like you explained yourself perfectly well, but, like I said, I didn't know enough about the names of French letters to understand what you meant.
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Post by Dormouse559 »

ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:50Also, I always saw the actual pronunciation of /ə/ being described as "like the eu in heure (or other words with /œ/)" so I used /œ/.
Good point. Worth noting that /œ ø ə/ are often merged in Modern French.
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Post by GrandPiano »

shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:23
GrandPiano wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:18
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:15
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I mean the letters that end in /e/. "b", "c", "d" etc. all end in /e/ and in other languages they all rhyme with "e" (like English /diː/ and /iː/, German and even original Latin /deː/ and /eː/), so I'm just wondering why "e" is somehow /ə~œ/.
Probably because /ə/ is the most common pronunciation of <e> in French (I don't think /œ/ is accurate... perhaps you meant [ɵ̞], which might be a more accurate transcription of French /ə/?).

Also note that, at least according to Wikipedia, those consonant letters are written <bé>, <cé>, <dé>, etc., with an acute accent, when spelled out.
Whether it's accurate or not, Wikipedia uses [œ] as a possible pronunciation of /ə/.
Huh. I'm probably wrong, then.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

GrandPiano wrote: 18 Feb 2018 05:23
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:23
GrandPiano wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:18
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:15
shimobaatar wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:07
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 02:47 Does anyone know why "e" is pronounced as /ə~œ/ in the French alphabet and not as /e/ like every other letter?
What do you mean "like every other letter"?
I mean the letters that end in /e/. "b", "c", "d" etc. all end in /e/ and in other languages they all rhyme with "e" (like English /diː/ and /iː/, German and even original Latin /deː/ and /eː/), so I'm just wondering why "e" is somehow /ə~œ/.
Probably because /ə/ is the most common pronunciation of <e> in French (I don't think /œ/ is accurate... perhaps you meant [ɵ̞], which might be a more accurate transcription of French /ə/?).

Also note that, at least according to Wikipedia, those consonant letters are written <bé>, <cé>, <dé>, etc., with an acute accent, when spelled out.
Whether it's accurate or not, Wikipedia uses [œ] as a possible pronunciation of /ə/.
Huh. I'm probably wrong, then.
Upon closer inspection, actually, the Wikipedia page on French phonology also contains the line "Geoff Lindsey suggests the symbol ⟨ɵ⟩", so who knows?
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Post by All4Ɇn »

Dormouse559 wrote: 18 Feb 2018 05:08
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:50Also, I always saw the actual pronunciation of /ə/ being described as "like the eu in heure (or other words with /œ/)" so I used /œ/.
Good point. Worth noting that /œ ø ə/ are often merged in Modern French.
I don't think I've ever heard the letter e not pronounced as /ø/
ixals wrote: 18 Feb 2018 04:50That makes sense. I just would have expected it to be pronounced as /e/ following all the other letters and languages, especially because /ə/ doesn't exist in "stressed" syllables (at least I don't know of any words where it does?). It always felt a bit strange to me. So "e" being pronounced as /ə/ definitely isn't a natural change from Latin "e" /eː/ and was a French innovation. Quite obvious if that's really the case.
Don't forget that until fairly recently words ending in -e always pronounced it as an /ə/. At that time it would've been by far the most common occurence of the letter e outside of é, è, eu. Seems logical to me that they would've borrowed the pronunciation for the vowel from the most common occurence of it that wasn't written as a digraph or with an accent mark.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

But stressed shwas are an abomination :mrgreen:
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Whenever someone stresses a schwa, it always just sounds like /œ/ or /ø/ to me. [:S]
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Post by shimobaatar »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 20 Feb 2018 18:53 Whenever someone stresses a schwa, it always just sounds like /œ/ or /ø/ to me. [:S]
Even in English?
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Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Ah, no, in English it usually sounds to me like /ʌ/, but in my idiolect, even unstressed schwas can sound like that.
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Post by shimobaatar »

To avoid getting burnt out on revising Project Ypsilon, I've been taking breaks from working on that language and revisiting Visigothic as well. I want to make it feel less like Spanish, so I've been looking at other Iberian Romance languages as well.

As I've been doing this, I've been reminded of the fact that many of these languages distinguish two rhotic phonemes (Spanish /ɾ/ vs. /r/ or Portuguese /ɾ/ vs. /ʁ/, for example). For whatever reason, it never occurred to me before now to wonder how this distinction came about. However, I was unable to find any information regarding the history of these contrasts.

So, my question is this: How did the phonemic distinction between two rhotic consonants found in many Iberian Romance languages arise?

Edit: After posting this, it occurred to me to check whether or not this contrast exists in Basque, too, and it appears that it does. Did the distinction spread from Basque into the peninsula's Romance languages?
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Post by All4Ɇn »

shimobaatar wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:31So, my question is this: How did the phonemic distinction between two rhotic consonants found in many Iberian Romance languages arise?
Well it kind of exists in Italian as well as [r] is more often than not pronounced as /ɾ/ while [rː] remains pronounced as /rː/. Iberian languages originally contrasted them the same way as modern Italian (r vs rː) but when gemination was lost, these languages ended up with two rhotics as [r] became [ɾ] and [rː] became [r]. Hopefully that was a good way of explaining it [:D]
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

All4Ɇn wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:41
shimobaatar wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:31So, my question is this: How did the phonemic distinction between two rhotic consonants found in many Iberian Romance languages arise?
Well it kind of exists in Italian as well as [r] is more often than not pronounced as /ɾ/ while [rː] remains pronounced as /rː/. Iberian languages originally contrasted them the same way as modern Italian (r vs rː) but when gemination was lost, these languages ended up with two rhotics as [r] became [ɾ] and [rː] became [r]. Hopefully that was a good way of explaining it [:D]
Oh, interesting. Thank you!

That does leave me with another question, though. Where did the /r rː/ distinction come from? Was it present in Latin (either Classical or Vulgar)?
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Post by gestaltist »

shimobaatar wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:49
All4Ɇn wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:41
shimobaatar wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:31So, my question is this: How did the phonemic distinction between two rhotic consonants found in many Iberian Romance languages arise?
Well it kind of exists in Italian as well as [r] is more often than not pronounced as /ɾ/ while [rː] remains pronounced as /rː/. Iberian languages originally contrasted them the same way as modern Italian (r vs rː) but when gemination was lost, these languages ended up with two rhotics as [r] became [ɾ] and [rː] became [r]. Hopefully that was a good way of explaining it [:D]
Oh, interesting. Thank you!

That does leave me with another question, though. Where did the /r rː/ distinction come from? Was it present in Latin (either Classical or Vulgar)?
Latin had rr clusters for sure. Not sure how they were pronounced exactly, though.
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Post by shimobaatar »

gestaltist wrote: 21 Feb 2018 09:40 Latin had rr clusters for sure. Not sure how they were pronounced exactly, though.
Thank you!
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Post by Zekoslav »

shimobaatar wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:49
All4Ɇn wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:41
shimobaatar wrote: 21 Feb 2018 07:31So, my question is this: How did the phonemic distinction between two rhotic consonants found in many Iberian Romance languages arise?
Well it kind of exists in Italian as well as [r] is more often than not pronounced as /ɾ/ while [rː] remains pronounced as /rː/. Iberian languages originally contrasted them the same way as modern Italian (r vs rː) but when gemination was lost, these languages ended up with two rhotics as [r] became [ɾ] and [rː] became [r]. Hopefully that was a good way of explaining it [:D]
Oh, interesting. Thank you!

That does leave me with another question, though. Where did the /r rː/ distinction come from? Was it present in Latin (either Classical or Vulgar)?
Latin [rr] is the result of simplification of several clusters containing [r], I believe [rs] > [rr] is the most common word-internally, and [nr] > [rr] is commonly found in prefixed words, with prefixes such as in- and con-.
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Post by Pabappa »

Basque may have played a role. Old Basque contrasted gemination for /n l r /, but not for stops or the labial nasal /m/.
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