# Are open-mid and closed-mid vowels still phonemic in French? How many minimal pairs?



## Nino83

Hello everyone.

As you know, in French there are open-mid and closed-mid vowels, but most of the time they follow the _loi de la position_.

If we exclude verbal inflections, like in _parler, parlé, parlerai_ vs. _parlais (ait, aient), parlerais (ait, aient)_, the opposition between [e] and [ɛ] is found in very few words. I've found only _fait/fée_ and _épais/épée_.

The situation is similar for [ø] and [œ]. There are only two minimal pairs that I know, _jeûne/jeune_ and _veule/veulent_.

The situation is similar for [o] and [ɔ] but, in this case, there are more minimal pairs, because of the fact that _al_ before consonants and the diphthong _au_ became [o] and, in some word, the /s/ in syllable coda was lost and the vowel was raised.

There are 8 minimal pairs _au/o_ and 7 _ô/o_, for a total of 15 minimal pairs.

_paume/pomme, saute/sotte, heaume/homme, rauque/rock = roc, taupe/top, saule/sol, hausse/os, beauf/bof; nôtre/notre, vôtre/votre, côte/cote, haute = hôte/hotte, môle/molle, khôl/col, cône/conne _

If we include some proper nouns or the preceeding article or pronoun, we have other 8 minimal pairs.

_Beauce / bosse, (La) Baule/bol, pôle = Paule/Paul, Maure/mort, Maude/mode, Côme/comme, m’ôte/motte, l’auge/loge_

So, in total, there are something like 20 minimal pairs (2+1+15, 23 if we include proper nouns). They are less that those of the cot-caught merger in English rhotic accents (in Canadian, Western American and Scottish English these vowels merged).

There are also some varieties of French, like Southern French, where closed-mid and open-mid vowels merged, and where [ɛ], [œ] and [ɔ] are allophones which always follow the law of position.

There are three questions:

1) Do you know if there are other minimal pairs in Standard French?
2) Can we say that [ø] and [œ] and [e] and [ɛ] are not different phonemes and that the latter opposition is confined to the difference between the _infinitive/past participle_ vs. _imperfect _distinction?
3) And what about the opposition between [o] and [ɔ]? Is it a marginal opposition, like that between /uː/ and /ʊ/ in English and /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ in English rhotic accents without the cot-caught merger?

Thank you


----------



## Swatters

My gut reaction was that there are many more examples, but thinking about it, most of these are specifically Belgian (dé /de/ vs dés /dɛ/, also we retain the opposition between [o] and [ɔ] in final open syllables) or even dialectal within Belgium (mai /me/ vs met /mɛ/).

You've missed a few for France French, though:

[e] - [ɛ]

pré - prêt/près
coller - collet (you've included saute and sotte, so I take it verb/noun oppositions count)
bée - bai
blé - blet
rez - raie/rets/rai (Most of these are archaic admittedly)
crée - craie

[o] - [ɔ] (In closed syllables, the first's always [o:] though)
tome - tomme
fausse - fosse
gaude - gode(michet)
faune - phone

I have some limited vowel harmony going on in my mid vowels (pommeau [pomoˑʷ] vs pommette [pɔmɛtʰ]; il protégera [ipχɔtɛʒʁa] vs vous protégerez [vupχɔ̝teʒʁe], which has also been reported for the French of Northern France : https://hal.inria.fr/file/index/docid/256384/filename/harm.pdf. I'm not sure whether that's an argument for or against the phonemic status of the mid vowels though.


----------



## Nino83

Thank you very much, Swatters! 



Swatters said:


> You've missed a few for France French, though:



Yes. I made the same question about /è/ and /é/ in the French only forum and there is some other example: _anglé _en _anglais_, _carré_ et _caret_, _lé _et _lait _(ou _laid_), _été_ et _étai, dais _et_ dé_, _épais_ et _épée. _



Swatters said:


> I have some limited vowel harmony going on in my mid vowels , which has also been reported for the French of Northern France.
> I'm not sure whether that's an argument for or against the phonemic status of the mid vowels though.



If this phenomenon increases the number of minimal pairs or, on the contrary, of homophones, it would be relevant.  

Now there are 12 minimal pairs for /è/ and /é/ and 19 for /ò/ and /ó (27 if we includes proper names). 

What do you think? Are there a lot of minimal pairs with these vowels, like the 466 ones in English with /iː/ and /ɪ/ or are they like the 18 between /uː/ and /ʊ/ and the 30 between /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ (English rhotic accents)?  

The fact that in some vatiants, like Southern French, these sounds merged makes me think that the number of minimal pairs is very low, but I'd like to know the opinion of French native speakers like you. What is your impression?


----------



## TitTornade

Others é - è minimal pairs that came to my mind in few seconds :
forer - forêt
muer - muet
hé - haie
lé, les - laid
gué - gai
chez - chais
rez, ré - raie, rais
coller - collet
P - pet, paix
T, té, tes, thé - tais, taie, têt
and certainly some others

and of course :
all the infinitive in -er or participle in-é vs. imperfect (ex : aller, allé - allais)
first person of the futur tense vs conditionel : irai - irais

For me, these minimal pairs are really still alive... 
But, it depends on the region/persons...


----------



## frugnaglio

Valais, valait / vallée


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> The fact that in some vatiants, like Southern French, these sounds merged makes me think that the number of minimal pairs is very low, but I'd like to know the opinion of French native speakers like you. What is your impression?


I am not a native speaker, but I have more or less the same impression for French as for the mid vowels in Italian: there are minimal pairs that distinguish two degrees of mid vowel height, and the normative standard tends to make a big deal out of them, but there are also many varieties where the distinction is completely lost, and speakers do not find the resulting homophony to be problematic.

How many minimal pairs is enough to justify a phonemic distinction? In principle, you don't even need a single minimal pair, as long as you can otherwise demonstrate that the distribution of the two sounds is not allophonic.

And how many minimal pairs is enough to ensure that the phonemic distinction will remain alive and healthy for a long time? I don't know if any number is large enough to guarantee this: there are many examples of languages acquiring lots of new homophones after a phonemic merger.


----------



## Nino83

Thank you, TitTornade, frugnaglio.



CapnPrep said:


> How many minimal pairs is enough to justify a phonemic distinction? In principle, you don't even need a single minimal pair, as long as you can otherwise demonstrate that the distribution of the two sounds is not allophonic.
> 
> And how many minimal pairs is enough to ensure that the phonemic distinction will remain alive and healthy for a long time? I don't know if any number is large enough to guarantee this: there are many examples of languages acquiring lots of new homophones after a phonemic merger.



Now we have something like 24 minimal pairs between /è/ and /é/ and 22 between /ò/ and /ó/.

For me, if there are few minimal pairs, let's say 30-40 of which most are not common words, like _dais, caret, veule, _or onomathopeia like _bof (meh!, nah!), hé (hey!), bée (bouche ouverte)_ or letters of the alphabet like _P, T_, or acromyms like _os (ouvrier spécialisé)_, or foreign proper nouns of products like _khôl (khol)_, that are used sporadically, then the difference between two phonemes is not relevant and a merger in some varieties is possible.

In fact, in English, those vowels that have very few minimal pairs merged in some varieties, like /uː/ and /ʊ/ in Scottish English and /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ in Canadian, Western American and Scottish English.

I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, a merger between /iː/ and /ɪ/, 466 minimal pairs or between /æ/ and /e/, 305 minimal pairs, in English.

Another fact is that in French probably there are fewer minimal pairs between /ò/ and /ó/ than in Italian or in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, because /ó/ was raised to /u/ in closed syllables and was diphthongized and later monophthongized to /œ/ in open syllables, the same for /é/ that was diphthongized to /wa/ in open syllables.
This is, probably, why French developed the _loi de la position_, because, due to these changes, there were very very few minimal pairs.


----------



## merquiades

There may be relatively few minimal pairs between open and closed e and o, but at least around here Native speakers seem to need that difference in quality to understand.  I personally have noticed this.  Two instances,  I heard "mode" mistaken for "Maud" in a conversation, and "forer" for "forêt".  Even when there are no minimal pairs I have seen looks of pain on people's faces when they don't hear what they are expecting.  There may not be a word "cafet", but I have seen exasperated waiters not understand and repeat "you mean café, don´t you?" when the vowel is wrong.
It probably is different from Italy where if I understand correctly each region and speaker says what he wants and everything works.

At least in reputation Parisians have the impression of opening their vowels, "vous voulait" for "vous voulez" a trait not very appreciated outside Paris.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Even when there are no minimal pairs I have seen looks of pain on people's faces when they don't hear what they are expecting.  There may not be a word "cafet", but I have seen exasperated waiters not understand and repeat "you mean café, don´t you?" when the vowel is wrong.



But Parisians are famous for mocking foreigners. How is it possible for them not to understand the word _cafè_?
Why 15 million of Southern French don't care about it?
Is it really a matter of misunderstanding?

Maybe, when a Parisian says _ne voʁei ɔ̃koʁa_, we should start asking _cosa? non capisco! forse volevi dire *a*ncora? esatto?_

But _noi non facciamo queste cose_. 



merquiades said:


> It probably is different from Italy where if I understand correctly each region and speaker says what he wants and everything works.



In Northern Italy (from Piedmont to Emilia Romagna), where Gallo-Italian languages are also spoken, there is a similar law of position about /è/ (in closed syllables) and /é/ in open syllables, but this doesn't happen for /ò/ and /ó/. In Apulia, the law of position works for both /e/ and /o/. In Sicily, Salento, part of Calabria, Piedmont, Liguria and Emilia there are only mid-vowels /E/ and /O/. In the rest of Italy (except very few words), the distribution is equal to the Tuscan one (Central Italy, Rome, Naples and so on).

There are few minimal pairs just in Italian, Portuguese, Galician and Catalan. In French they are probably fewer.


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> But Parisians are famous for mocking foreigners. How is it possible for them no to understand the word _cafè_?
> Why 15 million of Southern French don't care about it?
> Is it really a matter of misunderstanding?


  The café example I gave was far from Paris, it was in Beaune, and I don't remember if the person was a foreigner.  Anyway there is a difference between mocking and not understanding.  That was clearly the case with mode/ Maud.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> The café example I gave was far from Paris, it was in Beaune



That is in the oïl France.



merquiades said:


> Anyway there is a difference between mocking and not understanding.  That was clearly the case with mode/ Maud.



Yes, it is true for minimal pairs or for verbal inflections.

But, if you ask me _ti piace andare a pèsca?_ I won't reply saying _cosa intendi?_ (and it is a minimal pair, in the case of a bar or a restaurant, what could be a _cafè_?).
If I asked you _hey, I saw a hɑk flying_, and you know I come from, let's say, LA, what would you think I'm speaking of?


----------



## merquiades

I could see how fish and peach could be confused.  Imagine a Spaniard trying to make that difference.  If someone said hak, I'm not sure if I would understand  hack, hock, or hawk.  It would depend on the context.  In your example I might not understand immediately but it would come to me in the context.  At any rate I would probably not say anything, whether I understood or not.  I have misinterpreted stock/stalk before.
I spent a summer in California and some people did not understand me.  i remember having to repeat the word "crowbar" several times before they understood me.   They also didn't understand some common words I use that I thought were universal.  Sometimes I felt very foreign.

Were I a waiter I guess I would just politely repeat what I thought I understood.  So one café??  or something like that. Mind you waiters are not usually linguistically savvy.  I've got a lot of waiter stories world wide.  I ought to write a book.

At the present time standard northern accent is slowly taking root in the south in a way I don´t think could happen in Italy so I don't think the area would make much of a difference.


----------



## frugnaglio

Nino83 said:


> But, if you ask me _ti piace andare a pèsca?_


This is a clear case, but I have been baffled by a Venetian girl saying _tre pesche_ [trɛ'peske] instead of [trep'pɛske] and I could make out the words only after the third time she repeated those words. Of course however, the difficulty is very easily cancelled by mutual exposure to each other's accent.
My _valait/vallée_ example in French comes from two Belgian people not understanding me:

– (bla bla bla)... et ça n'en *valé* pas la peine.
– Quoi?
– Ça n'en valé pas la peine.
– Quoi??? Ah... tu veux dire *valait*.

and if this isn't a clear context...
However I'm sure for many French people the difference is not that important.


----------



## merquiades

frugnaglio said:


> This is a clear case, but I have been baffled by a Venetian girl saying _tre pesche_ [trɛ'peske] instead of [trep'pɛske]


 Just a little side question.  The mistaken vowel in "tre" aside, you also need to have the /p/ pronounced so strongly at the beginning of a word?  Would you understand tre caffé if it were not trekkaffè?


----------



## frugnaglio

merquiades said:


> Just a little side question.  The mistaken vowel in "tre" aside, you also need to have the /p/ pronounced so strongly at the beginning of a word?  Would you understand tre caffé if it were not trekkaffè?


That's because “tre”, like all words ending in a stressed vowel, causes the doubling of the following consonant in my local accent (and in standard Italian as well). Of course I would understand trekaffè, and even trekaffé, but in the case I mentioned three differences from my habitual pronunciation happened to occur in just two syllables, and it was too much.


----------



## Nino83

frugnaglio said:


> – (bla bla bla)... et ça n'en *valé* pas la peine.
> – Quoi?
> – Ça n'en valé pas la peine.
> – Quoi??? Ah... tu veux dire *valait*.
> and if this isn't a clear context...
> However I'm sure for many French people the difference is not that important.



But this is a case of verbal inflections. Except the difference between _infinitive/past participle_ vs. _imparfait_ (because in many parts of France, Paris included, _parler_*ai* and _parler*ais*_  just merged, both are pronounced with an open /è/), there are *very* few minimal pairs.



merquiades said:


> Just a little side question.  The mistaken vowel in "tre" aside, you also need to have the /p/ pronounced so strongly at the beginning of a word?  Would you understand tre caffé if it were not trekkaffè?



Merquiades, I understand, and I think frugnaglio too, both _tréppèske, trèpèske_ (Milanese accent), _trépéske, trèpéske_.
The difference is that depending on the pronunciation, you can say that the speaker comes from Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples, Palermo and so on. 

If you go to the market, in Florence, and say _quale péska mi consiglia?_ the fruit seller won't reply with _la péska della trota_ or _che cosa desidera? non capisco!_.
I've never seen a barman replying to an Englishman who asked for a _'kàffei_ with something like '_scusi, cos'è che vuole?'_.


----------



## frugnaglio

Nino83 said:


> But this is a case of verbal inflections. Except the difference between _infinitive/past participle_ vs. _imparfait_ (because in many parts of France, Paris included, _parler_*ai* and _parler*ais*_  just merged, both are pronounced with an open /è/), there are *very* few minimal pairs.



Right, but _valait/_*vallée* is not a case of infinitive/past participle vs. imparfait. I think it should count just like _épais/épée_. This is not to counter your conclusion that the difference has little phonemic value. I guess it depends on the region, just like they are different phonemes in Italian for me but not for someone from Milan.


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> But this is a case of verbal inflections. Except the difference between _infinitive/past participle_ vs. _imparfait_ (because in many parts of France, Paris included, _parler_*ai* and _parler*ais*_  just merged, both are pronounced with an open /è/), there are *very* few minimal pairs.


  Some people don't articulate well in France in whatever area (Chais po mwain), but speakers who do want to speak well make that difference.  It is still paramount to make the vous -ez and past participle é well closed, but even here we can't say 100% of all people do it.
I don't know why I have to force myself to close the future vowel and not write an -s.  Maybe because I don't use the first person future a lot.  I think maybe that form is slightly falling in disuse (emphasis on the slightly).  Je vais au ciné ce soir.  Je vais voir Teminator.



> Merquiades, I understand, and I think frugnaglio too, both _tréppèske, trèpèske_ (Milanese accent), _trépéske, trèpéske_.
> The difference is that depending on the pronunciation, you can say that the speaker comes from Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples, Palermo and so on.
> 
> If you go to the market, in Florence, and say _quale péska mi consiglia?_ the fruit seller won't reply with _la péska della trota_ or _che cosa desidera? non capisco!_.
> I've never seen a barman replying to an Englishman who asked for a _'kàffei_ with something like '_scusi, cos'è che vuole?'_.


  This is what I said before.  In Italy it doesn't matter much how you pronounce a vowel.  It doesn't keep people from understanding.  If that were not the case you wouldn´t have all those vocalic differences in Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence.  It's interesting that you find it so unimportant that in the written language you are not even bothered to show it:  pésca or pèsca.   You do often show those pesky double consonants though:  Davvero.  Vabbene.  Dappertutto.  So I conclude that that aspect is more bothersome.


----------



## Nino83

frugnaglio said:


> This is not to counter your conclusion that the difference has little phonemic value. I guess it depends on the region, just like they are different phonemes in Italian for me but not for someone from Milan.



For the record, I'm from Sicily and I pronounce _reddoppio fonosintattico_ (and due that I can speak also Sicilian, where /è/ and /é/, pronounced /i/, /ò/ and /ó/, pronounced /u/, are kept distinct, I can guess when there is an open-mid or a closed-mid vowel, in fact when I went to Rome some month ago, a person from Salento, who have the same vowels of Sicilians, and another from Naples thought I was Roman and many Romans didn't guessed I were Sicilian  ). 



merquiades said:


> In Italy it doesn't matter much how you pronounce a vowel.  It doesn't keep people from understanding.  If that were not the case you wouldn´t have all those vocalic differences in Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence.  It's interesting that you find it so unimportant that in the written language you are not even bothered to show it:  pésca or pèsca.   You do often show those pesky double consonants though:  Davvero.  Vabbene.  Dappertutto.  So I conclude that that aspect is more bothersome.



Yes. This is why I'm wondering why some Northern Frenchmen don't understand the word _cafè_, that has no minimal pair. It is incredible.  

You said that Northern accent in France is spreading to the South, but recent studies say that in the South still today open and closed mid vowels are allophones in the South, where _fait_ is pronounced like _fée_ and _tome_ like _tomme_.


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Yes. This is why I'm wondering why some Northern Frenchmen don't understand the word _cafè_, that has no minimal pair. It is incredible.
> 
> You said that Northern accent in France is spreading to the South, but recent studies say that in the South still today open and closed mid vowels are allophones in the South, where _fait_ is pronounced like _fée_ and _tome_ like _tomme_.


  I would have to see these studies to know when, where they were conducted and who was being interviewed.  I am basing it personally on southerners met in the north, hearing people when visiting the south, and interviews on television/ radio shows.  The people with the full southern accent diminish with age.  Older people have it much more (as per my summers in Avignon, Nîmes, Montpelier areas) Nowadays you can find 20 year olds with no accent at all. I don't know if this is due to schooling, moving around, the mass media or just plain ridicule/ belittlement.  For example, I met two psychology students from Toulouse this week with no accent (unless my ear is failing), and it's the first time they have lived outside the south.

Besides that people just would not say "un cafè", or "la vallèe". Why some people stare at the person they are talking to blankly when when the vowel they are expecting is not heard, I'll never know.  But it does happen.  Everyone has different linguistic ability/ tolerance.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Besides that people just would not say "un cafè", or "la vallèe".



They use the _loi de la position_, so they say _kafé_, _valé_ (for both _vallée_ and _valait_) and _fé_ (for both _fait_ and _fée_) and _pòme_ (for both _paume_ and _pomme_). 
These vowels are allophones for them. 

 French: A Linguistic Introduction   at page 28



merquiades said:


> Why some people stare at people blankly when when the vowel they are expecting is not heard, I'll never know.  But it does happen.  Everyone has different linguistic ability/ tolerance.



It is a mistery, due to the very very few minimal pairs.


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> They use the _loi de la position_, so they say _kafé_, _valé_ (for both _vallée_ and _valait_) and _fé_ (for both _fait_ and _fée_) and _tòme_ (for both _tome_ and _tomme_)..



_Cela vallée la peine_ sounds odd.
The t in _fait_ is usually sounded.
_Tome_ and _tomme_ are indeed both with open o.
I cannot imagine anyone pronouncing the closed vowel in _dôme, côme_ and _môme_ with the same open vowel as _tome_ though.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> The t in _fait_ is usually sounded.



But isn't there an opposition between _fait /fè/_ and _faite /fèt/_ in Standard French? 



merquiades said:


> I cannot imagine anyone pronouncing the closed vowel in _dôme, côme_ and _môme_ with the same open vowel as _tome_ though.



I linked the page of the book (while editing comment #21). 
For example _fait > fé_, _chose > chòz_ (page 28) in Southern French.


----------



## merquiades

I understand this law of positioning.  That is similar to what happens in Catalan and Portuguese.  I would not have a problem with what is said if we added the word "traditional variety".  It looks like we are talking about 1984.  Judging by people in their 60/70's, who do regularly have the accent described (which their grandchildren don't really) I can subscribe to the research. I would like to have heard what was spoken back then to compare
I'd be more inclined to think that Occitan faded into to mixed Occitan/ French which gave rise to strongly accented French, then regionally accented French, slightly accented French to finally standard French. We are coming to the end of a 100+ year process of language shift.  It's what happens when the local variant whatever it is, is considered vulgar.

I have yet to hear anyone not pronounce closed o in a word like _paume. _That doesn't mean it doesn't happen anywhere ever. It would stick out very strongly if someone said _jeu de_ _pomme_.  Those words written "(e)au" and "ô" are hammered into children in elementary school all over France that they are to be prononced closed and contrast with "o". I would expect more the "o" of _rose_ to be opened by people displaying southern dialect.  It passes more under the radar since it is not "au" or "ô".  However,  _Rhône_ pronounced _Ronne, _it's odd.  The contrasts between _saute-sotte, Paule-Paul, saule-sol_ are paramount everywhere.  _Paule_ gets angry when she is called _Paul_.  

Edit:  Maybe I have been exposed too much to one type of accent, but _palais, baie, paix, lait_ with é kind of throws me.  I'm sure I would understand in context but if someone just said "lé"  _lait_ would not be the first thing I think of.

Edit 2:  I'm pretty sure the authors of the manual  _French:  A linguistic introduction_ are wrong about words ending in -one.  I would say words like _polygone, zone_ are with open o not closed ô.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> I would not have a problem with what is said if we added the word "traditional variety".  It looks like we are talking about 1984.  Judging by people in their 60/70's, who do regularly have the accent described (which their grandchildren don't really) I can subscribe to the research. I would like to have heard what was spoken back then to compare



Also recent books like Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French published in 2009 say that:



> Among the minimal pairs in the PFC word-list (_épais/épée, jeune/jeûne, beauté/botté_) only one of the ten speakers produced an opposition (12atp1: _épais/épée_) which can perhaps be explained by the particular attention paid to speech in this task. In the rest of the word list and in the text, however, there is no exception to the law of position.



And about the allophonic difference between open-mid and closed-mid vowels they cite a recent work, Banisti/Gasquet-Cyrus 2003.



merquiades said:


> I understand this law of positioning.  That is similar to what happens in Catalan and Portuguese.


No, it is different.
Portuguese, like Italian, retains etymological vowels, for example_ s[e]ca (siccam)_ and_ m[o]sca (muscam) _
Catalan
- retains etymological /ò/ and /ó/, for example _m[o]sca, c[ɔ]sa (causam) _
- retained /è/ before /l, rC, rr, V (after loss of intervocalic consonant), nr/, _mèl, tèrra, mèrla, pèu (pedem), tèndre (tenerum)_
- reversed /è/ and /é/: _sèc (siccum)_ and _béc (bèccum)_

While, in French we have _bèc (bèccum)_ and _sèc (siccum) and cause /kóz/ (causa)_, different from Italian and Catalan _còsa_.
In French the sound of the vowel depends on the syllable structure (except those few minimal pairs).


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Also recent books like Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French published in 2009 say that:
> 
> 
> And about the allophonic difference between open-mid and closed-mid vowels they cite a recent work, Banisti/Gasquet-Cyrus 2003.



I do agree very much with this study.  It seems right on to me.  They document the accent shift going on in southern France on two fronts, with young/urban people leading the change and older/rural people lagging behind.  So a young woman in a town has more of the typical accent than someone of her age in the city, but perhaps less than an older person in the same town.  I might add another variable:  education.

I also see very well how at the beginning of the process first the nasal vowel is dropped in words like _vin blanc_, then secondly the final -e is deleted _une rose blanche_, and finally speakers adopt the standard differentiation between open/ closed vowels wherever it is found.  That would explain why 20 something people from Toulouse have very little accent but once in a while say _rose_ with open o. I can mentally hear where people are in this chain process.

I think it is also true that people are conscious about the importance of making the difference between _épée_ and _épais, _but less about an unaccented vowel like in_ beauté_ and _botté_.  That applies to people everywhere.  I would say again however that since almost everyone is literate and has gone through the schooling process, _beauté _with a strongly closed ô is expected.  It is the o of _botté_ that is more ambiguous, but it shouldn't close completely.  _Jeûne_ is not a common word.  I hear people use more the verb j_eûner_ with the closed vowel or the expression _à jeûn_ with a nasal vowel.  I will try to get people to say it.



> No, it is different.
> Portuguese, like Italian, retains etymological vowels, for example_ s[e]ca (siccam)_ and_ m[o]sca (muscam) _
> Catalan
> - retains etymological /ò/ and /ó/, for example _m[o]sca, c[ɔ]sa (causam) _
> - retained /è/ before /l, rC, rr, V (after loss of intervocalic consonant), nr/, _mèl, tèrra, mèrla, pèu (pedem), tèndre (tenerum)_
> - reversed /è/ and /é/: _sèc (siccum)_ and _béc (bèccum)_
> 
> While, in French we have _bèc (bèccum)_ and _sèc (siccum) and cause /kóz/ (causa)_, different from Italian and Catalan _còsa_.
> In French the sound of the vowel depends on the syllable structure (except those few minimal pairs).


  I was referring to how a vowel can open or close in words of the same family depending on whether it is accented or not.
_Terra_ versus _terrassa/ terraço,  porta_ versus _portal_


----------



## frugnaglio

merquiades said:


> This is what I said before.  In Italy it doesn't matter much how you pronounce a vowel.  It doesn't keep people from understanding.  If that were not the case you wouldn´t have all those vocalic differences in Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence.  It's interesting that you find it so unimportant that in the written language you are not even bothered to show it:  pésca or pèsca.



It depends on the place and on the listener's level of education or exposure to different accents. There are places where people (old unschooled people for example) are really thrown off by wrong e's and o's. The first time I heard a Swiss person say _cielo_ with a closed _e_ I didn't recognize the word, even if the context made it clear: I had to ask her what that word meant. So I can relate to the Frenchman bemused by _cafè_. I'd say the difference is phonemic for me, except for the words I'm accustomed to hear pronounced in different ways.



merquiades said:


> Vabbene.



I hope Paulfromitaly doesn't see this word or he'll start a tirade 



merquiades said:


> The t in _fait_ is usually sounded.



Isn't it sounded only in expressions like _en fait_, _de fait_ and the like?



merquiades said:


> I was referring to how a vowel can open or close in words of the same family depending on whether it is accented or not.
> _Terra_ versus _terrassa/ terraço,  porta_ versus _portal_



He wasn't referring to this with “law of position”, but to the degree of openness of the mid vowels depending on the syllable being open or closed, if I got it right. The _o_ in _portal_ is closed, but would be open according to the law of position.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> I was referring to how a vowel can open or close in words of the same family depending on whether it is accented or not. _Terra_ versus _terrassa/ terraço,  porta_ versus _portal_



The law of the position is a rule concerning *stressed* syllables.
It's normal that in Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Galician and Western Catalan, in *unstressed* syllables the opposition between open-mid and closed-mid vowels is neutralized.
But this has never to do with the law of the position. 

About Southern French accent, they find an evolution about the elision of the _e muet_ and of the nasal contoid but they didn't found any change about open-mid and closed-mid vowels in those minimal pairs.


----------



## Swatters

Nino83 said:


> If this phenomenon increases the number of minimal pairs or, on the contrary, of homophones, it would be relevant.



It might level the difference between botté and beauté. I maintain the opposition in this case though.



Nino83 said:


> but I'd like to know the opinion of French native speakers like you



I'm not a native speaker of _Standard _French. Belgian French maintains more quantity and quality distinction than hexagonal French and we tend to assuage our linguistic insecurity by looking down on the French for levelling the distinction between seau and sot, ami and amie, and (apparently) tome and tomme.* I wouldn't be surprised if the mid vowels merge in France French in the coming century, but that's my linguistic bias speaking.

* Conveniently forgetting our own innovations (s'abîmer >< s'abimer) and mergers (joint = juin), but that's par of the course.



merquiades said:


> _Tome_ and _tomme_ are indeed both with open o.





merquiades said:


> Edit 2: I'm pretty sure the authors of the manual _French: A linguistic introduction_ are wrong about words ending in -one. I would say words like _polygone, zone_ are with open o not closed ô.



All evidence is that the loi de position is creeping North, not disappearing in the South, and that's a pretty good example. [zɔn] will immediately mark someone as French where I'm from. It's like the greater realisation of schwa in northern France French compared to Belgian, Swiss and Canadian French, which is often explained by greater contact with Southerners.



Nino83 said:


> About Southern French accent, they find an evolution about the elision of the _e muet_ and of the nasal contoid but they didn't found any change about open-mid and closed-mid vowels in those minimal pairs.



In fact, this article shows that the law of position is best respected by _younger _speakers in their Marseilles survey.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> The law of the position is a rule concerning *stressed* syllables.


Vowels may be less distinctly pronounced in unstressed syllables, but the _loi de position_ as understood for southern French varieties applies to all syllables, stressed or not.


----------



## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> Vowels may be less distinctly pronounced in unstressed syllables, but the _loi de position_ as understood for southern French varieties applies to all syllables, stressed or not.



This is disputed. Some phoneticians, in fact, say that in unstressed pretonic syllables we have closed-mid /é/ if the syllable is open *and* the following stressed vowel is closer, for example _été = /é'té/_ a mid vowel /E/ if the syllable is closed or if the syllable is open *and* the following vowel is opener, for example _étais = /E'tè/, servir = /sEr'vir/_.
In other words, in unstressed pretonic syllables in French there is some metaphony and in these syllables there is no /è/, at least there is the mid vowel /E/, that is different from the /è/ in stressed syllables.

Anyway, due that in Romance languages the opposition between open-mid and closed-mid vowels in *unstressed* syllables is not *distinctive*, these *allophonic* differences in French unstressed syllables are not the object of this discussion, because they are *not* phonemic.

The difference is between those languages that retain etymological *stressed* vowels (like Italian, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish and so on) and those that follow the law of position (French, Gallo-Italian languages only for /e/).



Swatters said:


> In fact, this article shows that the law of position is best respected by _younger _speakers in their Marseilles survey.



The table at page 112 is very clear. Only two old speakers (74 and 81 years old) differenciate between /è/ and /é/ and nobody between /ò/ and /ó/.
Differently from the cases of nasal vowels and _e caduc_ (final schwa is the least pronounced, followed by that in medial position, 72% if we exclude _parce-que_ and _est-ce que_, while in initial position it is pronounced in 90% of the cases) where younger speakers tend to follow more the Parisian pronunciation than the older ones, in the case of the mid vowels there is no change and the law of position is a stable feature.


----------



## Hulalessar

Nino83 said:


> But Parisians are famous for mocking foreigners. How is it possible for them not to understand the word _cafè_?



The French certainly have a reputation for pretending not to understand when foreigners make a mistake in grammar or pronunciation. It is though quite easy to be thrown by a slight mispronunciation however linguistically aware you are because, at least at first, language tends to operate without conscious consideration.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> In other words, in unstressed pretonic syllables in French there is some metaphony and in these syllables there is no /è/, at least there is the mid vowel /E/, that is different from the /è/ in stressed syllables.


Vowel harmony/metaphony can be observed in standard French, but I have not seen it reported as a factor in southern varieties. If it is indeed present in these varieties, the effect must be much weaker than open/closed syllable adjustment in unstressed syllables.


Nino83 said:


> Anyway, due that in Romance languages the opposition between open-mid and closed-mid vowels in *unstressed* syllables is not *distinctive*, these *allophonic* differences in French unstressed syllables are not the object of this discussion, because they are *not* phonemic.


This is not true in standard French, where the quality of the vowel is usually preserved in derived forms. For example, speakers are supposed to distinguish _côté_ [kote] vs. _coté_ [kɔte], _paumé_ [pome] vs. _pommé_ [pɔme].


----------



## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> Vowel harmony/metaphony can be observed in standard French, but I have not seen it reported as a factor in southern varieties.



Yes, Canepari says that in Southern French (Marseille) in unstressed syllables there are only /é, ó, ø/, which is the normal pronunciation also in Occitan (in Occitan there is no /ø/ and unstressed /o/ is raised to /u/ but unstressed /è/ is raisied to /é/).
The fact that closed-mid /é/ and mid /E/ in unstressed syllables are present only in Northern French and that they are allophones, is the main reason why I'm speaking only of stressed syllable. The presence of some allophones in unstressed syllables in Northern French is not relevant to establish if /é/ and /è/ are really phonemic (except in verb conjugation) in Standard Northern French.



CapnPrep said:


> This is not true in standard French, where the quality of the vowel is usually preserved in derived forms. For example, speakers are supposed to distinguish _côté_ [kote] vs. _coté_ [kɔte], _paumé_ [pome] vs. _pommé_ [pɔme].



Thes are the only examples (with _beauté < belté_ vs. _botté_) and their rarity is explained by the fact that the form _côté_ derives from _costé_ while does _paumé_ derive from _paume < palme_?
These cases derive from the loss of /s/ and /l/ in syllable coda and minimal pairs (in unstressed syllable) are sporadic.
In fact it's not a case that there is no one minimal pair between /é/ and its allophone /E/ in unstressed syllables.  

Another thing, you're citing some words that *don't* follow (they are exceptions to) the rule of position in unstressed syllables and you're using these words to say that the difference between /ò/ and /ó/ in French in unstressed syllable is distinctive and, thus, the law of position is important also in unstressed syllables. But these words don't follow this law. 

Anway I'm interested in stressed syllables because in these ones there are some relevant minimal pairs.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Anway I'm interested in stressed syllables because in these ones there are some relevant minimal pairs.


Any o/ɔ mistake in stressed syllables sticks out like a sore thumb to northern speakers, where the phonemic distinction is alive and kicking, even when there is no minimal pair. If I am in the south and ask for directions and get told to turn [a gɔʃ] rather then [a goʃ] it is impossible not the recognize the accent as this would never ever happen in the North.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> Another thing, you're citing some words that *don't* follow (they are exceptions to) the rule of position in unstressed syllables and you're using these words to say that the difference between /ò/ and /ó/ in French in unstressed syllable is distinctive and, thus, the law of position is important also in unstressed syllables. But these words don't follow this law.


You are mixing up comments I made about southern French and comments I made about standard French. The examples I gave were for standard French, and I never said anything about the _loi de position_ in unstressed syllables in standard French.


----------



## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> You are mixing up comments I made about southern French and comments I made about standard French. The examples I gave were for standard French, and I never said anything about the _loi de position_ in unstressed syllables in standard French.



Ok.



CapnPrep said:


> Vowels may be less distinctly pronounced in unstressed syllables, but the _loi de position_ as understood for southern French varieties applies to all syllables, stressed or not.



In Southern French the law of position doesn't apply to the unstressed syllables. In unstressed syllables there are only closed /é, ó, ø/.  

http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_04_French.pdf


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> In Southern French the law of position doesn't apply to the unstressed syllables. In unstressed syllables there are only closed /é, ó, ø/.


Southern French does not distinguish between /o/ and /ɔ/ at all, in no context. I don't understand your point.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> In Southern French the law of position doesn't apply to the unstressed syllables. In unstressed syllables there are only closed /é, ó, ø/.


There is only one phoneme (that is the point of the law of position), so it doesn't matter if you say it is underlyingly close or open. It surfaces as mid-close in open syllables and mid-open in closed syllables, which is exactly the law of position.


----------



## Nino83

In Southern French, in stressed syllables /e, o, ø/ are pronounced [ɛ, ɔ, œ] in closed syllables and [e, o, ø] in open syllables. This is the law of position.
In unstressed syllables they are pronounced always [e, o, ø], both in open and closed syllables, so in unstressed syllables the law of position *doesn't* work in Southern French.

Some example (Southern French):
_fait/fée_ is [fe], _faite_ is [fɛtə]
_terrain_ [teˈʁɛ̃], _apercevoir_ [apeʁsəˈvwaʁ]
in unstressed syllables it is always closed-mid (also in closed syllables), not like in Northern French [tᴇʁɛ̃] and [apᴇʁsəˈvwaʁ].

Anyway, this topic is about stressed syllables, where there are these few minimal pairs.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> In Southern French, in stressed syllables /e, o, ø/ are pronounced [ɛ, ɔ, œ] in closed syllables and [e, o, ø] in open syllables. This is the law of position.
> In unstressed syllables they are pronounced always [e, o, ø], both in open and closed syllables, so in unstressed syllables the law of position *doesn't* work in Southern French.


Who told you this (besides Canepari)? Your example of _ap_[_e_]_rcevoir _seems completely unrealistic to me.

On this page you can find a Masters thesis that looks at data from the PFC for Aix-Marseille and Toulouse. The summary of results for unstressed syllables is on pages 39 and 65. Basically, the author found tense [e] and [o] in unstressed open syllables 95% to 98% of the time in these two varieties, and lax [ɛ] and [ɔ] in unstressed closed syllables 97% to 100% of the time.


----------



## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> Who told you this (besides Canepari)? Your example of _ap_[_e_]_rcevoir _seems completely unrealistic to me.



I only said that this is *disputed* (comment #31) and, anyway, it is ininfluent to our discussion, because there are *three* minimal pairs in unstressed syllables and all these derive from the loss of /s/ and /l/ before a consonants. There is no single minimal pair with unstressed /e/.

This discussion on unstressed syllables started from mequiades' statement "I understand this law of positioning. That is similar to what happens in Catalan and Portuguese.".

I don't care if Canepari or PFC is right about unstressed vowels.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> And what about the opposition between [o] and [ɔ]? Is it a marginal opposition, like that between /uː/ and /ʊ/ in English and /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ in English rhotic accents without the cot-caught merger?


Could you then explain what you mean by "marginal opposition"? In standard French, pronouncing _gauche _with an open _o _is not marginally wrong but completely wrong, even if it is not part of a minimal pair. The same is, by the way, true for pronouncing _food_ with the vowel of _foot_.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> Could you then explain what you mean by "marginal opposition"? In standard French, pronouncing _gauche _with an open _o _is not marginally wrong but completely wrong, even if it is not part of a minimal pair. The same is, by the way, true for pronouncing _food_ with the vowel of _foot_.



It is true that from a prescriptive point of view it's wrong to pronounce _foot_ with the vowel of _food_ or _caught_ with the vowel of _cot_. 
By the way, due to the very few minimal pairs, Canadians, Western Americans and Scots pronounce _caught_ with the vowel of _cot_, Scots pronounce _foot_ with the vowel of _food_ and in Liverpool, Lancaster and Yorkshire people pronounce _book, cook, hook, look_ and other _ook_ words, with the vowel of _food_. 

At the same time, Southern French, also younger speakers according to recent studies, pronounce _fait_ with the vowel of _fée_ and _paume_ with the vowel of _pomme_. 

From a prescriptive point of view, all these speakers have a "wrong" pronunciation while, in practical terms, these "mistakes" have a little relevance or no relevance at all. 

They are understood. The only difference is that one can say "ah, you are Canadian/Californian/Scot/Scousie/Toulousain!" like when one from Milan says _perch_*è*, you can say "ah, you are Milanese!".


----------



## berndf

You don't need studies to know that the open and closed o distinction is phonemic in Northern France and non-phonemic in southern France. That is absolutely blatantly obvious. I still don't understand why you insist on obscuring the forest by looking at every tree with a magnifying glass. Phonology is at least as much about what is unimportant as about what is important. Otherwise one could never understand one another.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> You don't need studies to know that the open and closed o distinction is phonemic in Northern France and non-phonemic in southern France. That is absolutely blatantly obvious.



Someone said that the accent of younger Southern French is becoming more similar to the Parisian Standard one.
These studies say that it is true for _e muet_ at the end of the word and for nasal vowels but the law of position is stable also among younger speakers, then these studies are important in order to know if there is phonemic distinction between open and closed mid vowels in Southern French.



berndf said:


> I still don't understand why you insist on obscuring the forest by looking at every tree with a magnifying glass. Phonology is at least as much about what is unimportant as about what is important. Otherwise one could never understand one another.



And, due to the fact that there are very few minimal pairs, it seems that this difference is not important, if we exclude verb inflections.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> I only said that this is *disputed* (comment #31) and, anyway, it is ininfluent to our discussion, because there are *three* minimal pairs in unstressed syllables and all these derive from the loss of /s/ and /l/ before a consonants. There is no single minimal pair with unstressed /e/.
> […]
> I don't care if Canepari or PFC is right about unstressed vowels.


First of all, in this discussion it doesn't matter _why_ any particular word has a particular pronunciation. Speakers pronounce the words of their language in one way or another without knowing anything about the loss of _s_ or _l _or anything else.

Second, if you believe that the facts about unstressed vowels are disputed, or if you simply _don't care_ about unstressed vowels, then please just say that, instead of making bold statements that are at best disputed, or at worst completely false.

And finally, Canepari can be right or wrong. The data in the PFC database is recordings of native speakers speaking their native language. The only choice you have there is either to accept that they exist, or ignore them, but by definition they are "right", unless you have some agenda other than describing and understanding French as French speakers speak it.


----------



## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> The data in the PFC database is recordings of native speakers speaking their native language. The only choice you have there is either to accept that they exist, or ignore them, but by definition they are "right", unless you have some agenda other than describing and understanding French as French speakers speak it.



I didn't know this work but now that I've read it I've no problem to say that the law of position applies also in unstressed syllables.
By the way, due that there are no minimal pairs with unstressed /e/ and only three with unstressed /o/ (because of the loss of a consonant), I'm not interested in these syllables, because I'm concentrating on _phonemic_ differences.
Thank you for the link about the law of position in Southern France.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Someone said that the accent of younger Southern French is becoming more similar to the Parisian Standard one.


This is true (and I think not only for younger speakers). Dialectal features of southern French are fading rapidly. I find it more appropriate to say that dialect influence on the way people speak fades, i.e. more people speak standard rather than southern French, rather than trying to describe a change in the dialect. Among the southern dialectal features, the non-distinction between open and closed o seems to be the most die-hard. Southern speakers often express uncertainty whether the o-sound in certain words are prescriptively open or closed. This is virtually unheard of among northern speakers (in stressed syllables at least; but that's what you want to concentrate on in this thread anyway). In my experience, this is the most reliable way to tell, if a phonemic distinction is active in people's native way of speaking or not. That's also why spelling mistakes are such an important tool for reconstructing the phonologies of dead languages.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> This is true (and I think not only for younger speakers). Dialectal features of southern French are fading rapidly. I find it more appropriate to say that dialect influence on the way people speak fades, i.e. more people speak standard rather than southern French, rather than trying to describe a change in the dialect.



We are not speaking of a dialect but of an accent. They speak Standard French but with a different pronunciation of these vowels and it is relevant only in very few minimal pairs. We're not speaking of a dialetc but of how Standard French is spoken/pronounced in the South.
The fact that there is no opposition and that also in Northern French this opposition is *limited* (/au, ô, ose/ plus /ais, ait, aient/), being the law of position a normal feature of Northern French (and an absolute rule in Southern French), it means that these vowels are allophones in the great majority of the words and that this is very different from the Italian, Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan, Roman, Neapolitan situation, i.e where there is a difference between the vowel in _bèccum_ and _siccam_.

This is also the reason why French pronunciation of mid vowels is by far more predictable and easy for foreigners.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> We are not speaking of a dialect but of an accent.


Yes, that might well be the mistake you are making. The effect, which is not uncommon in many languages today, we are observing is a gradual register shift from dialectal to a de-facto colloquial national standard (which should not be confused with the prescriptive standard). This shift often occurs feature-by-feature with some dialectal features being more persistent than others and with varying degrees of approximation to this standard in different speaker groups. Recovering lost phonemic distinctions are often among the features changes that take longest.

If you ignore this underlying mechanism and concentrate a pure phenomenological description of phonetic surface-structures IMHO you are making the analysis unnecessarily difficult.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> Yes, that might well be the mistake you are making.



In these studies, people are asked to speak French and these speakers think they are speaking (and they are really speaking) French.

The most important thing is that these exceptions to the law of position are *very* few also in Standard Northern French.
The Southern pronunciation is a further proof that these distinctions are not important.


----------



## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> The most important thing is that these exception to the lwa of position are *very* few also in Standard Northern French.


What do you mean by "*very* few"? Do you actually know how many there are? I could try to find out, but maybe you have already done this work since you make such a strong statement.

It is true that in stressed syllables, standard French strictly follows the _loi de position _in two cases: you only find [ɛ] in closed syllables and never [e], and you only find [o] in open syllables and never [ɔ]. But how many words have [ɛ] in final open syllables, and how many words have [o] in final closed syllables?

One very well-known exception is that in standard French, words can only end in [oz], and never in [ɔz], in violation of the _loi de position_. So just looking at this class of words, I find 282 examples in the Petit Robert. Is this what you mean by "*very* few" exceptions?


----------



## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> and how many words have [o] in final closed syllables?


For example, all single-syllable words spelled with _au_ and_ ô _(like _sause_ or _Rhône_) and we don't need any research to know that there are more than "very few" of them.


----------



## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> For example, all single-syllable words spelled with _au_ and_ ô _(like _sause_ or _Rhône_) and we don't need any research to know that there are more than "very few" of them.


We may as well do the numbers: 55 words ending in _-ôC(C)e_ and 110 ending in _-auC(C)e_ (but excluding _-aure_, which is pronounced [ɔʁ]).


----------



## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> Is this what you mean by "*very* few" exceptions?



I mean distinctive. There are few minimal pairs in Northern French (28, 32 with proper nouns, with /óC/ and 25 with /è#/) and some of these words are used sporadically.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I mean distinctive.


Yes, we too. You don't need minimal pairs to make it distinctive. Minimal pairs are just a tool to decide border cases. It is completely sufficient to know that a native speaker would spot a wrong type of _o_ instantly.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> Minimal pairs are just a tool to decide border cases. It is completely sufficient to know that a native speaker would spot a wrong type of _o_ instantly.



So, is the /é/ in _café_ phonemic too?
According to this definition every /e/ and /o/ is phonemic in French, also in those cases where they follow the law of position. 
And, consequently, also in Southern French every /e/ and /o/ is phonemic, because if you say _cafè_ they would say that this is the wrong pronunciation.


----------



## merquiades

Southern French for good or for bad is definitely considered dialectal in France.  It doesn't matter if there are 20 or 200 minimal pairs, when someone confuses [ɛ] and [e], [o] and [ɔ] , or [ø] and [œ] it is just not considered standard French.  _Â goche_ and _mé oui_ and ma seur are not standard, whoever and wherever they are said. If southern dialect is fading it is for a reason, at best it sounds pretty but not serious, and at worst it is ridiculed.  People have been denied jobs for having it, and some teachers, politicians, bureaucrats etc. see coaches to lose it.  This is true even if they live in the south.  Too much _Accent du soleil   _Mid vowel distinction might be the last to go but it is also disappearing.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> So, is the /é/ in _café_ phonemic too?


There I am not so sure. Minimal pairs like _et_ vs. _est_ are fading in colloquial speech all over the country.

I don't think the situation with e and o are symmetrical.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> I don't think the situation with e and o are symmetrical.



But, according to your definition, also final /o/ in Southern French would be phonemic, for example if one says _bravò_ Southern French people will say that the vowel is wrong, the right pronunciation is _bravó_, also in the South.  

Your definition doesn't convince me. If there are no minimal pairs it's hard to say that there is a _phonemic_ distinction.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> for example if one says _bravò_ Southern French people will say that the vowel is wrong


No, they wouldn't hear the difference, unless a speaker is perfectly diglossic. They might vaguely identify the pronunciation as "strange" but couldn't pinpoint what was wrong. I have once experienced something like that with a southern speaker who has certainly heard _sauce_ a million times pronounced by standard speakers but couldn't tell if the standard pronunciation was _sòs_ or _sós_.


----------



## Angelo di fuoco

Nino83 said:


> No, it is different.
> Portuguese, like Italian, retains etymological vowels, for example_ s[e]ca (siccam)_ and_ m[o]sca (muscam)_



Unlike in Standard Italian, in Portuguese it's nèv(e), not név(e), and fé, not *fê, so the rule doesn't apply always.


----------



## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Unlike in Standard Italian, in Portuguese it's nèv(e), not név(e), and fé, not *fê, so the rule doesn't apply always.



Yes, Angelo, there is always some little exception (for example in Tuscan there is /lèttera/ while in the other central and southern accents and languages there is /léttera/).  

Anyway, in both stressed open and closed syllables you find etymological /è, é, ò, ó/ in Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Galician and Portuguese (in the last two languages there is metaphony for /ò/, closed before Latin final /ų/, like in /nóvo/ and open in other contexts, /nòva, nòvos, nòvas/).  

In French they are allophones in most contexts.


----------

