Why does French sound so nasally?
Why does French sound so nasally?
Laurentian French speakers shorten high vowels such as i, u, and ou, affecting the way certain words sound. In Continental French, the nasal U has disappeared and been replaced with the nasal A sound, leaving Continental French with three nasal vowels.
Was there old French nose?
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.
When did French lose H?
In Latin, h was always pronounced. It was lost in Early Old French but the h was retained in spelling. Later, Germanic loanwords reintroduced the /h/ sound. /h/ was then lost again in common speech around the 16th – 17th century, but its pronunciation was encouraged by prescriptivists until the 20th.
Why does French sound so weird?
You say it as if French was a Germanic language or something. French has its roots in Vulgar Latin, and sounds so odd because of the Gaulish substratum.
Why Quebec is French?
The origins of Quebec French lie in the 17th- and 18th-century regional varieties (dialects) of early modern French, also known as Classical French, and of other langues d’oïl (especially Poitevin dialect, Saintongeais dialect and Norman) that French colonists brought to New France.
Why is French pronunciation so weird?
The biggest reason for unpronounced letters is that, at one time, the letters were pronounced. Spelling tends to reflect the language as it was spoken when the language was standardized, rather than how it’s pronounced today.
What does H mean in French?
In French spelling, aspirated “h” (French: “h” aspiré) is an initial silent letter that represents a hiatus at a word boundary, between the word’s first vowel and the preceding word’s last vowel.
Why can’t the French pronounce H?
H Muet. Most French H’s are mute — that is, they are not pronounced and the word acts as if it begins with a vowel. This means that contractions and liaisons are required.