# whence the nasals vowels in French



## cyaxares_died

There were nasals in Indo-European, there are nasals in French. Did Latin have nasal sounds? Are the French nasals directly from Indo-European and they died away in other Latin languages? Or why would a language start to have nasal sounds so suddenly?


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## brtkrbzhnv

1) Proto-Indo–European is not believed to have had nasal vowels. 
2) Latin did not have nasal vowels. 
3) As is evident from the spelling, French nasal vowels have their origins in vowels followed by nasal consonants: /blank/ → /blãnk/ → /blãk/.


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## Frank06

Hi,


cyaxares_died said:


> There were nasals in Indo-European, there are nasals in French. Did Latin have nasal sounds? Are the French nasals directly from Indo-European and they died away in other Latin languages? Or why would a language start to have nasal sounds so suddenly?


I am afraid that I don't understand your question. What do you mean by 'nasal' in this context? Nasal consonants, nasal vowels, both? Do you mean word final nasal vowels?

Anyway, PIE had nasal consonants (never saw reconstructed PIE nasal vowels), Latin had nasal consonants (vowels, I doubt, probably depends upon the timeframe, but I am not sure), French has both, Portuguese has both, Spanish has nasal consonants (just as +/- 97% of the world's languages).

Groetjes,

Frank


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## cyaxares_died

I meant nasal vowels. Thanks.


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## TitTornade

Hi,
According to _Martinet_, it seems that nasal vowels appears in French before XIIth century. But, some of them disappear before XVIth century.
He gives these exemples concerning the word "paysan" (peasant) and its feminine form "paysanne" and their pronounciations :
- time "before litterature" = masculine is said /peizan/ and feminine is said /peizanə/
- middle ages time = masc. /peizãn/ and fem. /peizãnə/
- modern time = masc. /peizã/ and fem. /peizan/

_Martinet_ indicate also that many modern words written with geminate -mm- or -nn- correspond to nasal vowels that disappeared at the same period (~XVIth century) in standard French (still heard in some regional French) :
Femme (woman) = /fãmə/ > /fam/
bonne (feminine of "bon" = good) = /bõnə/ > /bon/

I hope it helps...


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## sokol

TitTornade said:


> - time "before litterature" = masculine is said /peizan/ and feminine is said /peizanə/
> - middle ages time = masc. /peizãn/ and fem. /peizãnə/
> - modern time = masc. /peizã/ and fem. /peizan/
> ...
> Femme (woman) = /fãmə/ > /fam/
> bonne (feminine of "bon" = good) = /bõnə/ > /bon/
> 
> I hope it helps...


Thanks, this helps indeed. 

What Martinet says basically is, in other words (of course what follows is speculative  - it is only a way how development *could *have worked but it's *not *necessarily the correct explanation of how French nasal vowels actually did evolve into phonemes):

1.) Nasal vowels developped quite early in French: vowels before nasal consonant became nasalised (probably that's a general rule, probably there were some exceptions: your quote doesn't tell us Martinet's opinion on this).
At this stage, nasal vowels were *not *a phoneme yet - they were only allophones.

2.) Over time, nasal consonants were _lost _in word-final position (/peizãn/ > /peizã/) but the vowel still was pronounced as a nasal, while in non-word-final position the nasal was _not _lost but final _vowel _(the schwa of female /peizãnə/) was deleted.
Both worked in favor of developping nasal vowels as phonemes:
- the deleted word-final nasal made the feature of nasalised vowel more salient which *could *have been the trigger for developping nasal vowel phonemes (but in itself _might _not have been sufficient to achieve phonemisation, yet);
- and the "syllable sharpening" due to elision of final schwa in the female form _*might *_have been the second factor which finally fixed the development of French nasal vowel phonemes: in /pei.zã.nə/ nasal C is part of the last syllable so that /-zã-/ is an open syllable while in /pei.zãn/ nasal C changes this to a closed syllable /-zãn/.
Both closed syllables and short-final syllables may be responsible for phonetical shortening which could work in favour of de-nasalisation.

3.) With nasalisation preserved in /peizã/ but lost in /peizan/ the phonemic development finally was established (this now we know for sure as it is the present stage of French phonemic development): nasalisation suddenly has become a distinctive feature, new minimal pairs have come into existence.
Or to give a better example, with minimal pairs:
French ~ XII century: /bõn/ vs. /bõnə/
French ~ XV/XVI century & modern French: /bõ/ vs. /bon/, which contrasts with "beau" /bo/.
Before the loss of final "n" in the male form and denasalisation in the female form the French probably "heard" /bõ/ still as "bon" (they perceived probably nasalisation as "nasal consonant" and nasalisation could have been explained as context-dependend realisation of the nasal consonant phoneme).
After both those processes were established firmly this no longer was the case, and nasal vowel has become phonemic.

All this you've said, in principle, with your short quote.  (Not really of course, as said above: I'm speculating. )
This kind of phonetical process which, over time, triggers a shift in the phonological system is well-known; only I didn't know that it also happened that way in French (that is, according to Martinet).


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## berndf

brtkrbzhnv said:


> 2) Latin did not have nasal vowels.


Final _m_ is believed to have been mute and the preceding vowel might have become a nasal. E.g. _cum_ might have been pronounced [kũ].


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## CapnPrep

First of all, I don't know who deserves the credit for figuring out the history of French nasal vowels, but it was probably someone who died long before Martinet was born. This is a pretty firmly established part of French historical phonology.

Second, there are linguists who believe that the nasal vowels are still not phonemic in modern French, and that they should be derived from underlying tautosyllabic /VN/ sequences (i.e. a vowel plus a nasal consonant in a closed syllable). In other words, you basically start with underlying representations that look like Old French or current orthographic forms, and you reformulate more or less the historical developments of the last 800 years as a series of productive phonological rules.

I think that there are good reasons not to adopt this sort of analysis, but it should be recognized that if nasal vowels were completely phonemic, we might expect to find syllables of the form /ṼN/, and as far as I can tell, except in obvious loanwords, there aren't any. For example, as mentioned above, we have /bo/ _beau_, /bOn/ _bonne_, and /bÕ/ _bon_, but not /bÕn/.


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## TitTornade

sokol said:


> 2.) Over time, nasal consonants were _lost _in word-final position (/peizãn/ > /peizã/) but the vowel still was pronounced as a nasal, while in non-word-final position the nasal was _not _lost but final _vowel _(the schwa of female /peizãnə/) was deleted.
> Both worked in favor of developping nasal vowels as phonemes:
> - the deleted word-final nasal made the feature of nasalised vowel more salient which *could *have been the trigger for developping nasal vowel phonemes (but in itself _might _not have been sufficient to achieve phonemisation, yet);
> - and the "syllable sharpening" due to elision of final schwa in the female form _*might *_have been the second factor which finally fixed the development of French nasal vowel phonemes: in /pei.zã.nə/ nasal C is part of the last syllable so that /-zã-/ is an open syllable while in /pei.zãn/ nasal C changes this to a closed syllable /-zãn/.
> Both closed syllables and short-final syllables may be responsible for phonetical shortening which could work in favour of de-nasalisation.


 
Hi,
_Martinet _presumes the origin of the denasalisation of the feminine form is due to the "fall" of the "mute e" (schwa = ə) at the end of XVth century.


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## CapnPrep

TitTornade said:


> _Martinet _presumes the origin of the denasalisation of the feminine form is due to the "fall" of the "mute e" (schwa = ə) at the end of XVth century.


Are you sure about that? It's a very strange idea, since: 


Vowels also denasalized in words with no mute _e_ (e.g. _ami_ [ãmi] > [ami]).
Denasalization is also found in dialects where the mute _e_ is still pronounced: in the south of France they say [bOn@], not [bÕn@].
If the mute _e_ disappeared first, how can we explain the differences in the subsequent evolution of the masculine [bÕn] and the feminine [bÕn] (< [bÕn@])?


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## sokol

CapnPrep said:


> I think that there are good reasons not to adopt this sort of analysis, but it should be recognized that if nasal vowels were completely phonemic, we might expect to find syllables of the form /ṼN/, and as far as I can tell, except in obvious loanwords, there aren't any. For example, as mentioned above, we have /bo/ _beau_, /bOn/ _bonne_, and /bÕ/ _bon_, but not /bÕn/.


That's a good point, and it would indeed be possible to still describe nasal vowels as non-phonemic but assume an underlying nasal instead.

But I go here with the phonologist's bonmot (I think it goes back to Trubetzkoy but I'm not sure ) to always go with the most "simple" explanation (which means "most straightforward" in phonology talk of course, not "simple" at all); and it seems you're in perfect agreement with me here.

There's "franc" and "franche" - and both use the nasal. It is still difficult to find minimal pairs, especially with my limited French. 
"Phrase" is only a near-minimal-pair with "franche", and "frais, front, (ils) frouent" are perfect minimal pairs with "franc".
That's about the best ones I can come up with as far as French nasals are concerned ...


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## TitTornade

CapnPrep said:


> Are you sure about that? It's a very strange idea, since:
> 
> Vowels also denasalized in words with no mute _e_ (e.g. _ami_ [ãmi] > [ami]).


Hello,
_Martinet_ means that the fall of schwa is certainly at the origin of :
- masculine: /peizãn/ > /peizã/
- feminine: /peizãnə/ > /peizan/
It is understandable, else masculine and feminine forms would have had the same pronounciation.

Are you sure that _ami_ was pronounced with a nasal vowel ?



CapnPrep said:


> If the mute _e_ disappeared first, how can we explain the differences in the subsequent evolution of the masculine [bÕn] and the feminine [bÕn] (< [bÕn@])?


 
_Pierre Guiraud in "l'ancien français" _says that all the vowels followed by a nasal consonant (_n_ or _m_) became nasal vowels. Then two kinds of denasalisations occur: either the loss of the nasal consonnant at the end of a close syllabus (_vendre_: /vãndrə/ > /vãdrə/ > /vãdr/) or the loss of the nasal vowel at the end of an open syllabus (_bonne_: /bõnə/ > /bonə/ > /bon/). I think, in this way, he disagree with _Martinet_.



CapnPrep said:


> Denasalization is also found in dialects where the mute _e_ is still pronounced: in the south of France they say [bOn@], not [bÕn@].


Do you mean in the present ?
The feminine form _bonne _is now pronounced /bon/ (to be more precise, the standard pronounciation is /bɔn/) in the northern part of France. In the south, it is in general closer to /bɔnə/ (as you said). But I don't know if it can occur such a pronounciation: /bõnə/ in the present. But if it occurs, it would be in the south of France 
Anyway, many people in the southern France keep some nasal vowels we don't use in the north:
- _année_ (year): north => /ane/, south => /ã(n)ne/
- _grammaire_ (grammar): north => /gRa(m)mɛR/, south => /gRã(m)mɛRə/...


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## TitTornade

Re,
CapnPrep and Sokol: are nasal vowels phonemic or not?
As French is not a really language with "accent-word" (as English) can we consider the following examples as minimal pairs opposing nasal+N and vocal+N:
- _point noir_ /pwẽnwaR/ vs _poids noir_ /pwanwaR/?
- _Pont Neuf_ /põnœf/ vs _pot neuf _/ponœf/ vs _pain neuf _/pẽnœf/?
- _beau nez_ /bone/ vs _bon nez_ /bõne/?
- _beau bas_ /boba/ vs _bon bas_ /bõba/ vs _beau banc _/bobã/ vs _bon banc _/bõbã/ (this one is only for fun...)


They are phonemic, aren't they?


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## CapnPrep

TitTornade said:


> _Martinet_ means that the fall of schwa is certainly at the origin of :
> - masculine: /peizãn/ > /peizã/
> - feminine: /peizãnə/ > /peizan/
> It is understandable, else masculine and feminine forms would have had the same pronounciation.


Would you mind giving the exact reference? It seems like he is determined to find a functional explanation to link these three developments (denasalization, loss of nasals, loss of schwa), but the fact is that these were general sound changes that applied throughout the language, even in cases where no morphological distinction was at stake.



> Are you sure that _ami_ was pronounced with a nasal vowel ?


Yes, in accordance with the evolution that you described (as outlined by Guiraud, and many many others).



TitTornade said:


> CapnPrep and Sokol: are nasal vowels phonemic or not?
> As French is not a really language with "accent-word" (as English) can we consider the following examples as minimal pairs opposing nasal+N and vocal+N:


I'm not sure what the word accent has to do with it. French still has _words_. Anyway, what we are looking for is /ṼN/ in the same syllable, but in all of your examples, the /n/ is the onset of the following syllable. 

Here is a marginal example: _danse_ [dÃs] vs _dance_ [dÃns] (= "dance music", obviously a recent loan from English).


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## TitTornade

CapnPrep said:


> Would you mind giving the exact reference? It seems like he is determined to find a functional explanation to link these three developments (denasalization, loss of nasals, loss of schwa), but the fact is that these were general sound changes that applied throughout the language, even in cases where no morphological distinction was at stake.


The reference is :
"_Pour une linguistique des langues" _sous la direction d'Henriette Walter et de Colette Feuilalrd (PUF) 2006.




CapnPrep said:


> I'm not sure what the word accent has to do with it. French still has _words_. Anyway, what we are looking for is /ṼN/ in the same syllable, but in all of your examples, the /n/ is the onset of the following syllable.
> 
> Here is a marginal example: _danse_ [dÃs] vs _dance_ [dÃns] (= "dance music", obviously a recent loan from English).


 
I think that, in "dance music, "dance" is pronounced /dɛns/. Never heard a nasal vowel in this word.

So you mean that nasal vowels are not phonems because they never appear followed by a /n/ or a /m/, right?
What about the sound /ɔ/ the never appear in open syllables ? Is it anyway a phonem ? It permits to distinguish _cote_ /kɔt/ and _côte /kot/_, or _comme_ /kɔm/ and _Côme _/kom/ in close syllables. So it is a phonem, right ?

So, if _beau_ /bo/ and _bon_ /bõ/ can be distinguished as minimal pairs (with _bas _/ba/, _bain /_bẽ/, _bu _/by/, _bée _/be/, _baie _/bɛ/, _banc_/_ban _/bã/, _boeufs _/bø/, _boue_/_bout_/_bouh _/bu/...), /o/ and /õ/ are phonems, right? Except if you consider that "on" /õ/ is not a vowel but a mix between a vowel and "the nose"... 

About the word accent: I talked about this because I thought you were speaking about nasal vowel + N in any situation, I mean, not only in the same syllable. And as the border between words is not very strong in spoken french (certainly due to the lack of word accent and perhaps also to _liaisons_ and to the presence of many open syllables...), groups of words as _point noir_ /pwẽnwaR/ or _poids noir_ /pwanwaR/ can appear as unique words! But you are right, the two nasal sounds do not belong to the same syllable.

Let me try another example with liaisons (the dot /./ separate the syllables):
- _prochain_ /pRoʃẽ/ + _arrêt _/aRɛ/ = /pRo.ʃẽn.a.Rɛ/ or /pRo.ʃẽ.na.Rɛ/??
- _prochaine_ /pRoʃɛn/ + _arête_ /aRɛt/ = /pRo.ʃɛn.a.Rɛt/ or /pRo.ʃɛ.na.Rɛt/ ??
Is ẽ a phonem ? In the first way to write the phontics (underlined), yes !


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## Forero

Nasalization is not unique to French, but occurs in neighboring languages too, including English and some other Romance languages.

American "Southern twang" is a nasalization phenomenon. I use a nasal vowel in _want_ and _one_, similar to French _an_/_am_ but with a schwa at the end.

Cockney English often drops final consonants like _t_. When a final _nt_ is dropped, the vowel becomes nasalized.

Catalá drops _n_s and _m_s and supposedly once had nasal vowels, but they have since lost their nasality.

Portuguese has nasal vowels, but at the ends of words and before other vowels instead of before consonants.


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## Forero

berndf said:


> Final _m_ is believed to have been mute and the preceding vowel might have become a nasal. E.g. _cum_ might have been pronounced [kũ].


Or [kõ]. As a prefix _cum_ becomes _con-_, _com-_, _col-_, _cor-_, or _co-_, depending on the next sound.

Except for words borrowed back from Latin, Romance languages have lost almost all trace of word final _-m_. The exceptions are one-syllable words (French _rien_, Spanish _con_, etc.)

Latin _-um_ corresponds to Greek _-on_. In Romance languages and in modern Greek, the final nasal consonant has for the most part disappeared.


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## berndf

Forero said:


> Or [kõ]. As a prefix _cum_ becomes _con-_, _com-_, _col-_, _cor-_, or _co-_, depending on the next sound.


You are absolutely right. _-um_ = [õ] also explains why _-us_ and_ -um _later became _-o_ (derived from accusative _-um_ for both masculine and neuter).


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## CapnPrep

TitTornade said:


> I think that, in "dance music, "dance" is pronounced /dɛns/. Never heard a nasal vowel in this word.


Yes, I took the pronunciation from the _Petit Robert_. I guess that people who know English would be more likely to pronounce it as you described.



> So you mean that nasal vowels are not phonems because they never appear followed by a /n/ or a /m/, right?


Not exactly… The question is whether it is necessary to have nasal vowels in the phonemic representation or if we can always assume that they are derived from /VN/ sequences in closed syllables. As I already said earlier, I do not support the second approach, but I believe that it can be made to work (with several additional assumptions).


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## sokol

TitTornade said:


> So you mean that nasal vowels are not phonems because they never appear followed by a /n/ or a /m/, right?


Not quite, as CapnPrep already said.
The traditional phonemical analysis is to describe French nasals as phonems - but phonemic analysis isn't set in stone; it may change according to the theories behind your analysis (even if language doesn't change at all ).
That may sound illogical but it is not.  Anyway, for practical purposes you can just ignore the fine detail of phonemical analysis.

The minimal pairs you've given are good but CapnPrep thinks, and I agree fully, that it should be possible to analyse /bõ/ simply as /boN/ with /N/ = not pronounced as nasal but realised as nasalisation of the vowel before. Neither CapnPrep nor I are promoting this theory, we're just both thinking that it would be possible to analyse French according these lines.

Also, if there *would *be a French word like /bõn/ this would be an *excellent* argument against analysing /bõ/ as /boN/ - obviously because /bõn/, in this case, would be (phonemically) /boNn/ (where /N/ again would cause nasalisation of /o/): and it would not make much sense to suggest such a nasalising phoneme inserted before a nasal vowel.
But as /bõn/ (or similar words) seem not to exist in standard language the alternative analysis as /boN/ still would be possible.



TitTornade said:


> Let me try another example with liaisons (the dot /./ separate the syllables):
> - _prochain_ /pRoʃẽ/ + _arrêt _/aRɛ/ = /pRo.ʃẽn.a.Rɛ/ or /pRo.ʃẽ.na.Rɛ/??
> - _prochaine_ /pRoʃɛn/ + _arête_ /aRɛt/ = /pRo.ʃɛn.a.Rɛt/ or /pRo.ʃɛ.na.Rɛt/ ??
> Is ẽ a phonem ? In the first way to write the phontics (underlined), yes !


That's an excellent example!
And it would tip the scales toward the "classical" interpretation of French nasals as phonemes (rather than consecutive vowel + underlying nasal) if I wouldn't have been in the "nasal-phoneme camp" yet.

If one would analyse [pRoʃẽ] as /proʃeN/ phonemically (with exact same pronunciation, only changed to phonological transcription) then one would expect in liaison [pRo.ʃɛN.a.Rɛ] (open [ɛ] as the nasalised "e" in French also is open).
But as you say the nasal is retained in liaison (I do not know French phonetics in such detail, so thanks for the example!) the phonemical analysis of /proʃẽnarɛ/ is much better because if you'd stick to /proʃɛNarɛ/ you'd have to give an extra rule explaining why in liaison nasal vowel is retained.
(Note, probably (!!) it still would be possible to use the "vowel + nasal" analysis; but the scales are definitely tipped towards the "nasal vowel" theory".)

Thus, I guess you've answered your question yourself correctly; there are very good arguments in favour of a phonemical analysis of French nasals as nasal vowel phonemes.


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## CapnPrep

Believe me, the people who defend the /VN/ analysis have plenty of ideas about liaison. You could say, for example, that a nasal consonant causes nasalization of the preceding vowel, and is then "marked" for deletion, but that this deletion does not occur in liaison environments, because the consonant is resyllabified as the onset of the next syllable.

So we would have a sequence of steps like this for _prochain arrêt_:prOSen + aret → prOSẽ(n) + are(t) → pRO.SẼ.na.RE​ This analysis exactly reproduces the presumed historical development. For cases where the resulting vowel is _not_ nasal (e.g. _bon homme_ [bO.nOm]) you have to reorder the rules or add a restricted denasalization rule to avoid producing [bÕ.nOm].


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## sokol

CapnPrep said:


> Believe me, the people who defend the /VN/ analysis have plenty of ideas about liaison. You could say, for example, that a nasal consonant causes nasalization of the preceding vowel, and is then "marked" for deletion, but that this deletion does not occur in liaison environments, because the consonant is resyllabified as the onset of the next syllable.


Indeed, that's quite logical - this explanation also really would make sense.  (And I guess there are still other possibilities to explain nasals in liaison.)

But I personally still would prefer to explain the reappearence of "n" in liaison on a morphological level because in this case we do not need the "marking-for-deletion"-rule - thus, I'd still stick to the analysis of French nasals as phonemes: the lesser rules the better, that's my point of view in such cases.

(As you see I've never done a detailed phonemical analysis of French, thus I'm discovering some of its facettes only now.)


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## Istriano

Many Brazilian phoneticians claim Brazilian Portuguese has no nasal  vowels, but only nasalized vowels, because nasal vowels are not in  contrast with oral vowel+nasal consonant sequence:

*In French /bõ/* contrasts with */bon/*, which contrasts with */bo/*"beau" .
So, French has perfectly nasal vowels, 

this contrast is impossible in Brazilian Portuguese.

In Continental Portuguese perfect nasal vowels are possible in
Lisbon Portuguese:  *vi *(oral) ~ *vim *(nasal vowel) ~ *vime  *[vim] (oral vowel + nasal consonant).

What do you think?
Why have these rules for nasal phonemes (rather than nasalized variations) become so strict?

PS
Also, isn't the French vowel in */bõ/* supposed to be open (ò) rather than close (ó)?


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## CapnPrep

Istriano said:


> Also, isn't the French vowel in */bõ/* supposed to be open (ò) rather than close (ó)?


Phonetically, this vowel can be realized as either [ɔ̃] ([Õ], nasal open _ò_) or as [õ] (nasal closed _ó_), or anything in between. Phonemically, I don't think it really matters if we use /ɔ̃/ or /õ/, does it?


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## Brioche

TitTornade said:


> Hello,
> 
> Anyway, many people in the southern France keep some nasal vowels we don't use in the north:
> - _année_ (year): north => /ane/, south => /ã(n)ne/
> - _grammaire_ (grammar): north => /gRa(m)mɛR/, south => /gRã(m)mɛRə/...



How were things pronounced at the time of Molière?

That southern pronunciation of _grammaire_ looks very much like _grand'mère_

"Les femmes savantes" 

*Bélise*
Ton esprit, je l’avoue, est bien matériel.
_Je_ n’est qu’un singulier, _avons_ est pluriel.
Veux-tu toute ta vie offenser la grammaire ?
*Martine*
Qui parle d’offenser grand’mère ni grand-père ?


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## Kevin Beach

Forero said:


> Cockney English often drops final consonants like _t_. When a final _nt_ is dropped, the vowel becomes nasalized.


Not always; not even more often than not! In my experience, the people who would do this are usually those we'd say are "talking through their noses" anyway, i.e. all their speech is nasal.


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## TitTornade

Brioche said:


> How were things pronounced at the time of Molière?
> 
> That southern pronunciation of _grammaire_ looks very much like _grand'mère_
> 
> "Les femmes savantes"
> 
> *Bélise*
> Ton esprit, je l’avoue, est bien matériel.
> _Je_ n’est qu’un singulier, _avons_ est pluriel.
> Veux-tu toute ta vie offenser la grammaire ?
> *Martine*
> Qui parle d’offenser grand’mère ni grand-père ?


 
Hi,
Yes, you're right. Molière's joke still works in southern France but is more difficult to understand in northern France 



> Envoyé par *Istriano*
> Also, isn't the French vowel in */bõ/* supposed to be open (ò) rather than close (ó)?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Phonetically, this vowel can be realized as either [ɔ̃] ([Õ], nasal open _ò_) or as [õ] (nasal closed _ó_), or anything in between. Phonemically, I don't think it really matters if we use /ɔ̃/ or /õ/, does it?
Click to expand...

 
The pronounciation /ɔ̃/ or /õ/ depends on the region where you live  I think I use the second one... but the first one or anything in between is common too... and generally understandable... 

Else, CapnPrep, I think I've found a language in which nasal vowels can not be considered as /VN/ sequences. Tell me what you think about it :
The Breton language uses the sounds /ɑ̃n/ (it is wrote : _an_ or _ann_) and the sound /ɑ̃/ (it is wrote : _añ_)
E.g. _amann_, pronounced /amɑ̃n/ means "butter"
and _amañ, _pronounced /amɑ̃/ means "here"


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## Istriano

When I hear French people saying _France_, to me it sounds like they're saying *frõs * (rounded nasal vowel, as in Portuguese *emoções*)
When I hear French-speaking Canadians pronouncing _France_, to me it sounds like *frãs *(unrounded nasal vowel, as in Portuguese *maçã*)


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## Orlin

Istriano said:


> When I hear French people saying _France_, to me it sounds like they're saying *frõs * (rounded nasal vowel)


I don't speak French and my impression is the same.


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## TitTornade

Istriano said:


> When I hear French people saying _France_, to me it sounds like they're saying *frõs * (rounded nasal vowel, as in Portuguese *emoções*)
> When I hear French-speaking Canadians pronouncing _France_, to me it sounds like *frãs *(unrounded nasal vowel, as in Portuguese *maçã*)


 
Hi,
Nasal vowels in french vary according to the region where you live...
But, I can say that *frõs *is closer to the prononciation of "fronce"  not of "France"

To my ear, the canadian pronounciation of "France" is closer to *frẽs* or to *frε~s*. And, I guess they use diphtongs too... French from France doesn't use diphtongs in nasal vowels 

Anyway, the english people I know pronounce "France" as *frõs*.


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## berndf

I agree with Istriano that the the vowel in "France" is rounded in France and not rounded in Canada. But there is still a clear an phonemic distinction between "fronce" and "France" in French French. The vowel in "fronce" is, depending on the speaker, between [õ] and [ɔ̃ ̃] while the vowel in "France" I hear as [ɒ̃ ] in French and as [ɑ̃] in Canadian pronunciation.


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## XiaoRoel

En las lenguas románicas hay dos tipos de nasalización:
a) la resultante de la *caída de nasal* posterior, en general por lenición de sustrato céltico; es un *fonema* que se opone a vocal oral;
b) la resultante de la contaminación en contacto con nasal: es un *alófono*, no un fonema.


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## Istriano

This is how I hear the Parisian vowels:

*/ɛ̃/ ~ /**œ̃/  as  [**æ̃] or even [ã]*  (ã as a front vowel, not the central [ä]).
(It sounds like a fronter version of Brazilian Portuguese _ã_ in _rã, maçã;
raisin _sounds _like rezã _to me, two vowels in this word are nothing alike_ )

_
*/ɑ̃/ as [ɒ̃ ] or even [ɔ̃]*  (it sounds like Brazilian Portuguese _ó_ in av_ó_ but nasalized)

*/**ɔ̃**/ as [õ]*  (_garçon _pronounced exactly like Brazilian Portuguese _garçom _''waiter'')


Parisian vowels are shifting anticlockwise while Quebec vowels are shifting clockwise, so misunderstandings can be common. 

French is becoming like English, in which [läst] can mean _last _or _lust _or _lost_ depending on the accent used. 

In dictionaries I see *simplement */sɛ̃pləmɑ̃/ but on French TV I hear [sãpləmɔ̃] (phonetic transcription), the 1st nasal sounds like a nasalized front a, and the second nasal like a nasalized open o. 
The only time I've heard */ɛ̃/ as [**ɛ̃] *was in a Belgian dance cover of a French song *Les Sunlights Des Tropiques.*  I compared it to the original, and in the original it sounds more like *[**æ̃] or even [ã].
*
It's funny, but European Portuguese had a nasal shift too, _bem _used to have a nasal [e], but now that's only in Brazil, in Lisbon it's pronounced with a nasal _a_. *
bien/bem*: close nasal e in the new World, but more and more like ã in European capitals.* 

 *


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## berndf

Istriano said:


> */ɛ̃/ ~ /**œ̃/  as  [**æ̃] or even [ã]*  (ã as a front vowel, not the central [ä]).
> (It sounds like a fronter version of Brazilian Portuguese _ã_ in _rã, maçã;
> raisin _sounds _like rezã _to me, two vowels in this word are nothing alike_ )
> _


I agree that French /ɛ̃/  is very close to the nasal spelled "ã" Portuguese but the Portuguese "ã" as in _maçã _is certainly not [ã] either. I suspect you are deceived by the way the sound is spelled in Portuguese; "ã" is as little a nasal "a" as "in" in French "vin" is a nasal "i". In both languages the nasals are considerably displaced from their non-nasal counterparts.


Istriano said:


> */ɑ̃/ as [ɒ̃ ] or even [ɔ̃]*  (it sounds like Brazilian Portuguese _ó_ in av_ó_ but nasalized)
> 
> */**ɔ̃**/ as [õ]*  (_garçon _pronounced exactly like Brazilian Portuguese _garçom _''waiter'')


I think we all agree with you about the rounding of /ɑ̃/ to [ɒ̃] and the raising of /ɔ̃/ to [õ]. Where I don't agree is /ɑ̃/ = [ɔ̃]. I made this mistake as a beginner and was regularly corrected. French do notice when you say /ɑ̃/ = [ɔ̃] and perceive it as wrong.


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## Hulalessar

sokol said:


> ..it would indeed be possible to still describe nasal vowels as non-phonemic but assume an underlying nasal instead.



Would that idea be possible to sustain (or even have been thought of) if French were a language that had never been written down? Since it_ is _written down, is the fact that the "m's" and "n's" are there and necessary according to the rules of French orthography to indicate that the proceeding vowel is nasalised not suggesting the idea?


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> Would that idea be possible to sustain (or even have been thought of) if French were a language that had never been written down?


Yes, because alternations between Ṽ and VN are pervasive in French morphology (many examples already mentioned above).


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> Yes, because alternations between Ṽ and VN are pervasive in French morphology (many examples already mentioned above).



True, but alternations between zero and many consonants are pervasive in French morphology.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> True, but alternations between zero and many consonants are pervasive in French morphology.


Which is why many linguists have proposed analyses that assume underlying consonants in French (not only nasals). It happens that a lot of these consonants are indicated in French orthography, but this is not the main motivation for such analyses.


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## Istriano

berndf said:


> I think we all agree with you about  the rounding of /ɑ̃/ to [ɒ̃] and the raising of  /ɔ̃/ to [õ].  Where I don't agree is /ɑ̃/ = [ɔ̃]. I made this mistake as a beginner and was regularly  corrected. French do notice when you say /ɑ̃/ = [ɔ̃] and perceive it as wrong.



But I found  [ɒ̃] very difficult to pronounce, even the non nasal vowel [ɒ] (typical of RP _song, long, wrong_ and used by some Canadians for the_ cot/caught/long _vowel; this is the preference of Canadian Oxford Dict.). 
[ɑ] is much easier (the way I pronounce _cot/caught/song_, typical of American West).

So, I think, I will use nasalized [æ,ɑ,o].


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> It happens that a lot of these consonants are indicated in French orthography, but this is not the main motivation for such analyses.



I cannot help feeling that that is the case.

Take the French word for "good". When you learn French you are told that in the singular it has two forms:_ bon_ (masculine) and _bonne_ (feminine). Knowing those two rules you can write the correct form so long as you know the gender of the word being qualified. However, it is only a rule that allows you to write the correct form. To pronounce the masculine form correctly you need to know quite separate rules relating to liaison. If you were being taught French not with the standard orthography but with the IPA, the rules on how to write the French word for "good" word would not be as simple as _ bon_ = masculine and _bonne_ = feminine.

What has happened to French is that because its orthography is etymological what are generally referred to as grammatical rules fail to take account of phonology. In fact if French were written phonetically its grammar (or to be precise morphology) would appear a lot trickier in that many words would have more than one form. (Of course in speech many words do have more than one form.)

Can we get away from the conclusion that some phonological analyses of French are to an extent influenced by the way it is written? (In fact I would go further and suggest that many aspects of the grammatical analysis of French are to an extent influenced by the way it is written and because we know it is descended form Latin.) Morphological rules as to what form a word should take (even though those rules are phonologically motivated) are being imposed on phonological analysis. Phonological anayisis has to an extent to rely on semantics, but surely not on morphology?


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## Hulalessar

We know that the English indefinite article derives from the Old English word _an_ (= "one"). Suppose (and having regard to English orthography it is entirely possible that it could be the case) that in Modern English the indefinite article were always written <an>, but, as is the case, the /n/ were not pronounced before a consonant sound. Would that justify us saying that whenever the n-less form were employed we have to assume an underlying /n/? I think not. But... it could be that I think not because there are in fact two written forms.

The notion that in phonology you can have an "underlying sound" does not seem to me a very sound one. I am however open to be persuaded to the contrary.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> The notion that in phonology you can have an "underlying sound" does not seem to me a very sound one.


Quite a few phonologists would agree with you, but in the preceding messages in this thread we have been assuming a transformational framework (with underlying phonemes and phonological rules), and if you have studied some phonology, you should already be familiar with the motivations behind such an approach, even if you don't choose to adopt it. And within this framework, deriving [Ṽ] from /V+N/ is a natural thing to do.



Hulalessar said:


> Can we get away from the conclusion that some phonological analyses of  French are to an extent influenced by the way it is written? (In fact I  would go further and suggest that many aspects of the grammatical  analysis of French are to an extent influenced by the way it is written  and because we know it is descended form Latin.)


"To an extent", yes, but this is a weaker conclusion than what you said earlier: that these analyses are mainly based on orthography, and would not even be considered if not for the orthography. As a matter of fact, linguists should (and do) look at historical/orthographic facts because they can provide clues about the synchronic analysis, but the real motivation has to come from morpho-phonological evidence in the modern, spoken language. And as we discussed above, the /VN/ analysis of nasal vowels does seem to work quite well for French. Again, if you don't believe in underlying phonemes, then you won't believe this analysis, but that's not an argument against the analysis itself. And saying that the underlying /bOn/ looks too much orthographic ‹bon› isn't an argument against the analysis, either. You need to show that the analysis _doesn't work_.



Hulalessar said:


> Morphological rules as to what form a word should take (even though those rules are phonologically motivated) are being imposed on phonological analysis. Phonological anayisis has to an extent to rely on semantics, but surely not on morphology?


I'm afraid I don't understand either of these two statements.


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## Istriano

The problem with French pronunciation is:

1. 99 % of publications, works, articles are focused on  *phonology*, and the symbols used reflect the pronunciation of Parisian French from 120 years ago, when IPA was established.

2. very little is published on modern PHONETICS of French, that is, real sounds, how foreigners should pronounce the sounds.

The most accurate description of French phonetics (rather that phonology) is written by Luciano Canepari (professor at the University of Venice). You can get the chapter on French at his site, free of charge:

in English: http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_04_French.pdf
in French: http://venus.unive.it/canipa/dokuwi...:pdf&cache=cache&media=en:mpr_04_francais.pdf



As for the origin of nasal vowels in French, try *Nasal  vowel evolution in Romance*

preview available at Google books.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> ...it should be recognized that if nasal vowels were completely phonemic, we might expect to find syllables of the form /ṼN/, and as far as I can tell, except in obvious loanwords, there aren't any.


Is that so? What about _ennui_?


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> Is that so? What about _ennui_?


I guess this thread was inactive for too long… As discussed above (see my post #14) the relevant counter-examples would have Ṽ followed by N *in the same syllable*. _Ennui_ could be analyzed as /aN.nyi/, giving rise to a nasal vowel in the first syllable, followed by a nasal onset in the following syllable. A word like _ennemi_ would have no underlying nasal in the first syllable: /E.nə.mi/. [For Hulalessar: note the mismatch between the proposed phonological form and the orthography in these examples.]

Again, I am not necessarily defending this analysis of nasal vowels (and other aspects of French phonology), but it is not obviously wrong.


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## Hulalessar

Any definition of a phoneme given by those who contribute to this forum is likely to include some idea of contrast and semantic significance. _The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems_ takes a different approach and defines a phoneme as: "A group of similar speech sounds signified by an alphabet letter". (I think it is implicit in the definition that it is assumed that the alphabet in question is one without polyvalence!)

Whilst that definition may not be accepted, it reminds us that every orthography using an alphabet prompts its users to think of speech as divisible into segments called consonants or vowels. The very idea of phonemes surely arises because we have alphabetic writing.

It seems to me that if a linguist is going to describe the phonology of a language as spoken today he needs to describe it as he finds it today. Assuming any preliminary classification of the phones takes the common sense approach that totally unrelated phones must be separate phonemes, in order to decide whether closely related sounds are to be classified as separate phonemes he needs to bring in semantics because that is what his definition of a phoneme will involve. No definition of phoneme that I have seen brings in morphology.

His task, though not necessarily easy, will be easier if the language he is studying is not written down. However, if written down like French, it is going to very difficult to eliminate the "Blackwell factor" which is that there is at the same time an alphabet which presupposes a prior phonemic analysis and an alphabet that fixes the phonemes; that is we cannot say whether the phonemes have determined the alphabet or the alphabet has determined the phonemes.


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