Michael Everson wrote:
>
> Le ouiquende?
For those Hexagonal French that use it, why not? Étiemble (died last
week, well-known writer) writes "vuiquinde" or "ouiquinde" (spelling
also found in the popular satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné and
authors such as Jacques Perret et Obaldio). The very popular San Antonio
writes in his "ouiquand, vouécande, véquande". Etc. (ouiquinde 6
occurences in Google, ouiquende 92, ouiquande 5).
>
> The rule is, for words which have the diacritic, to pronounce them
> more or less as they are in the original language. "Naïve" is
> disyllabic [na'i:v]. "Façade" is [fa'sa:d] while "facade" implies
> [f@'keid].
I understand, but you cannot assume that everybody is or should be a
polyglot or an etymologist (see below).
>> Personally -- and I do not want to go on with this off-topic thread
>> -- I would understand "garson" and "fasade" if those words were to
>> be used commonly and people were ready to accept it.
>
>
> The first would be OK, but the second would still be [f@'seid]. You'd
> need *fasaad or *fasahd.
How about a diacritic for long a? This is what I meant: diacritics are
great when you have too many phonemes. Why use digraphs (ah) ? This may
lead to problems (a + "aspirated""h).
Fasâd ;-)
>
> English spelling rather accurately evinces pre-Great Vowel Shift
> Middle English pronunciation.
Hmm. Teaching more Old English in immigrant classes? But don't you mean
pre-GVS spelling? E.g feet /fe:t/ but leadan /le:dan/, already two ways
of writing /e:/ that shifted to /i:/.
> At least for the set of irregularities that are usually put forward as
> being problematic.
Well, some difficulties have nothing to do with vowels : gh (I believe
x or ç disappeared before the GVS, it first lengthens the vowel than it
gets shifted might /miçt/->/mi:t/->/mait/), th (dh or th), silent w,
silent t, initial o pronounced as w, silent initial k, disappearance of
r in British English, superfluous letters such as b in tomb,subtle,
silent h (honour, philharmonic), etc.)
I have to work!
Patrick
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