Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/670

634 FRANCE [LANGUAGE. and ai generally liavc the principal stress. In reading poetry, as distinguished from singing, the modern pronunciation is used, both as to the loss of the iinal o and the displacement of the stress, the result being that the theoretical metre in which the poetry is written disappears. ( 24.) In certain cases accented vowels were lengthened in Old French, as before a lost s ; this was indicated in the 16th century by a circumflex bete, Old French bcsta (bcstiam), d/iie, Old French anme (anima). The same occurred in the plural ol many nouns, where a consonant was lost before thes of the flexion; thus singular coc with short vowel, plural cos with long. The plural cos, though spelt coqs instead of c6 ( k66), is still sometimes to be heard, but, like other similar ones, is generally refashioned after the singular, becoming kdk. In present French, except where a difference of quality has resulted, as in c6te (Old French coste, costam) with 6 and cotte (Old French cote) with 6, short and long vowels generally "run together, quantity being now variable and uncertain ; but at the beginning of this century the Early Modern distinctions appear to have been generally preserved. (d} Orthography. The history of French, spellings is based on that of French sounds ; as already stated, the former (apart from a few Latinisms in the earliest docu ments) for several centuries faithfully followed the latter. When the popular Latin of Gaul was first written, its sounds were represented by the letters of the Roman alphabet; but these were employed, not in the values they had in the time of Caesar, but in those they had acquired in consequence of the phonetic changes that had mean time taken place. Thus, as the Latin sound u had become 6 (close o) and u had become y (French u, German ii), the letter u was used sometimes to denote the sound 6, some times the sound y ; as Latin k (written c) had become tsh or ts, according to dialect, before e and i, c was used to represent those sounds as well as that of L The chief features of early French orthography (apart from the specialities of individual MSS., especially the earliest) are therefore these: c stood for k and tsh or ts: d for d and dh (soft th}; e for e, , and &; g for g and dzh; h was often written in words of Latin origin where not sounded; i (J) stood for i, y consonant, and dzh; o for 6 (Anglo-Norman it) and o; s tor s and z; t for t and th; u (v) for 6 (Anglo- Norman u), y, and v; y (rare) for i; z for dz and ts. Some new sounds had also to be provided for : where tsh had to be distinguished from non-final ts, ch at first, as in Italian, denoting k before i and e (chi = Jd from qvl) was used for it; palatal I was represented by ill, which when final usually lost one I, and after i dropped its i; palatal n by gn, ng, or nyn, to which i was often prefixed; and the new letter iv, originally mi (vv), and sometimes representing merely uv or vu, was employed for the consonanfe-sound still de noted by it in English. All combinations of vowel-letters represented diphthongs; thus ai denoted a followed by i, ou either ou or on, ui either oi (Anglo-Norman ? ) or yi, and similarly with the others ei, eu, oi, iu, ie, ue (and oe), and the triphthong leu. Silent letters, except initial h in Latin words, are very rare; though MSS. copied from older ones often retain letters whose sounds, though exist ing in the language of the author, had disappeared from that of the more modern scribe. The subsequent changes in orthography are due mainly to changes of sound, and find their explanation in the phonology. Thus, as Old French progresses, s, having become silent before voiced consonants, indicates only the length of the preceding vowel; e before nasals, from the change of c, (nasal e) to a (nasal a), represents a; c, from the change of ts to s, represents s; qu and gu, from the loss of the w of hv and f/iv, represent k and g (hard); ai, from the change of ai to e, represents c; ou, from the change of ou and on to it, represents u; ch and g, from the change of tsh and dzh to sh and zh, represent sh and zh ; eu and ue, originally representirg diphthongs, represent oe (German o); z, from the change of ts and dz to s and z, represents s and z. The new values of some of these letters were applied to words not originally spelt with them : Old French I- before i and e was replaced by qu (cvesqne, eveske,"La,t mepiscopum); Old French u and o for 6, after this sound had split into eu and it, were replaced in the latter case by ou (rous, for ros or rus, Latin russitm) ; s was inserted to mark a long vowel (paalc,pale, Latin pallidum); eu replaced ue and oe (neuf, nuef, Latin novitm and novem); z replaced s after e (nez, nes, ndsum). The use of x for final s is due to an ortho graphical mistake; the MS. contraction of us being some thing like x was at last confused with it (iex for ieus, oculds), and, its meaning being forgotten, u was inserted before the x (yeux), which thus meant no more than s, and was used for it after other vowels (voix for vois, vocem). As literature came to be extensively cultivated, traditional as distinct from phonetic spelling, began to be influential; and in the 14th century, the close of the Old French period, this influence, though not overpowering, was strong stronger than in England at that time. About the same period there arose etymological as distinct from traditional spelling. This practice, the alteration of tradi tional spelling by the insertion or substitution of letters which occurred (or were supposed to occur) in the Latin (or supposed Latin) originals of the French words, became very prevalent in the three following centuries, when such forms as debvoir (debere) for devoir, faidx (falsum) for faus, autheur (auctdrem, supposed to be authorem) for auteur, poids (supposed to be from jtondus, really from pensum) for pois, were the rule. But besides the etymo logical, there was a phonetic school of spelling (llamus, for instance, writes eime, eimates with e = e, e = e, and e = 9 for aimai, aimastes), which, though unsuccessful on the whole, had some effect in correcting the excesses of the other, so that in the 17th century most of these inserted letters began to drop; of those which remain, some (jiegme f or flemme orfleume, Ija.tinphlegma) have corrupted the pro nunciation. Some important reforms as the dropping of silent s, and its replacement by a circumflex over the vowel when this was long; the frequent distinction of close and open e by acute and grave accents; the restriction of i and u to the vowel sound, of j and v to the consonant; and the intro duction from Spain of the cedilla to distinguish c = s from c k before a, u, and o are due to the 1 Gth century. The replacement of oi, where it had assumed the value e, by ai, did not begin till the last century, and was not the rule till the present one. Indeed, since the IGth century the changes in French spelling have been very small, compared with the changes of the sounds; final consonants and final e (unaccented) are still written, though the sounds they represent have disappeared. French orthography is now quite as traditional and unphonetic as English, and gives an even falser notion than this of the actual state of the language it is supposed to represent. Many of the features of Old French orthography, early and late, are preserved in English orthography ; to it we owe the use of c for s (Old English c = k only), of j (i) for dzh, of v (u) for v (in Old English written/), and probably of ch for tsh. The Eng lish w is purely French, the Old English letter being the runic j>. When French was introduced into England, kw had not lost its w, and the French qu, with that value, replaced the Old English cp (queen for cpen). In Norman, Old French 6 had become very like u, and in England went entirely into it; o, which was one of its French signs, thus came to be often used for u in English (come for cumc). U, having often in Old French its Modern French value, was so used in England, and replaced the Old Eng lish y (busy for bysi, Middle English brud for bryd), and y was often used for i (day for dai). In the 13th century, when ou had come to represent u in France, it was borrowed by English, and used for the long sound of that vowel (sour for stir); and gu t which had come to mean simply g (hard), was occasionally used to represent the