# French 'comme' («gemination»)



## Riverplatense

Hello!

Can someone explain why French _cum/com_ developed to _comme_? I think the reason of _-e_ is the adjunction of ET (like Italian _come_), but why -_mm_-? Is it just an orthographic convention?

Thank you!


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## Nino83

I don't know why. It seems strange that there was some gemination from Old French to Middle French. As far as I know in Neapolitan it is _comm_, pronounced ['kɔmmə] while in Sicilian it is ['kɔmu], in Romanesco and Tuscan it is ['kɔme].


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## Riverplatense

Nino83 said:


> in Neapolitan it is _comm_



That's precisely why I'm writing 

My hypothesis for Neapolitan was something like analogical phonosyntactical gemination, but that's far-fetched, therefore I wanted to know why in French there's a gemination, too.


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## Swatters

That kind of non-etymological double <mm> generally indicates nasalisation, not gemination. When the language was standardised, comme was pronounced /kɔ̃mə/


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## Riverplatense

Nino83 said:


> in Romanesco and Tuscan it is ['kɔme]



Isn't it (QUŌMODO →) ['kome]? But then it should also be *_cumu _in Sicilian.


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## Nino83

Riverplatense said:


> Isn't it (QUŌMODO → ['kome])? But then it should also be *_cumu _in Sicilian.


Ops, you're right! 
So, the Sicilian [ɔ] could be due to the fact that the word was borrowed from Tuscan or it could be due to a different evolution. Yes, it is ['kome]. 



Swatters said:


> That kind of non-etymological double <mm> generally indicates nasalisation, not gemination. When the language was standardised, comme was pronounced /kɔ̃mə/


Is this the reason why we find a lot of double /nn/ in French orthography, in words like _dictionnaire_?


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## Riverplatense

Swatters said:


> That kind of non-etymological double <mm> generally indicates nasalisation, not gemination. When the language was standardised, comme was pronounced /kɔ̃mə/



Thank you! Everything's clear now!



Nino83 said:


> So, the Sicilian [ɔ] could be due to the fact that the word was borrowed from Tuscan or it could be due to a different evolution. Yes, it is ['kome].



By the way I had _cummë _for Neapolitan. I just could explain the raising as «pretonic» (cf. Romanian _cum_), as metaphony has nothing to do with it.


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## Nino83

Riverplatense said:


> By the way I had _cummë _for Neapolitan. I just could explain the raising as «pretonic» (cf. Romanian _cum_), as metaphony has nothing to do with it.


I'm quite sure it's _commë_ in Neapolitan.
here you can find some _proverbio napoletano_.
L'ammore è comm' 'o ffuoco, guaje a chi ce pazzea.
L'amore è come il fuoco, guai a scherzarci.
Comme facettete mammeta (song)


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## Swatters

Nino83 said:


> Ops, you're right!
> Is this the reason why we find a lot of double /nn/ in French orthography, in words like _dictionnaire_?



Yes, same process (although a learned word like _dictionnaire _might have had a somewhat different history). Words like _année, sonne_, _évidemment _and _solennel _/sɔlanɛl/ all owe their orthographies to open-syllable nasal vowels that were denasalised between Middle and Classical French.


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## Nino83

Thank you, Swatters, I always wondered why French orthography had all those double "nn".


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## Riverplatense

Nino83 said:


> I'm quite sure it's _commë_ in Neapolitan.



Oh, I see. Of course, I also remember
Si' sicura 'e chist'ammore
comm'i so' ssicuro 'e te ...​Here my ears don't expect any _u_

I think dialectal transcriptions tend to show variations, so maybe that's why I have _cummë_ in my text (which, moreover, is rather old).


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## bearded

Swatters said:


> Words like _année, sonne_, _évidemment _and _solennel _/sɔlanɛl/ all owe their orthographies to open-syllable nasal vowels that were denasalised between Middle and Classical Fren


Yes, and in my view the 'gemination' shows precisely the non-nasalisation (_an vs. année, son vs. sonne, évident vs. évidemment..._), and therefore I think that the correct reply to River's original question should be:  _com/cum _became _comme _in order to avoid the nasal sound. It is not an orthographic convention, but rather a pronunciation exigence.
A marginal remark: it was the OP mentioning _cum _(in old French) that led to the Latin _cum/quomodo _misunderstanding above.


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## Nino83

bearded man said:


> A marginal remark: it was the OP mentioning _cum _(in old French) that led to the Latin _cum/quomodo _misunderstanding above.


In Romanesco, Neapolitan and Sicilian, _con_ and _per_ lost the final consonant, so we have _co, pe_ (Romanesco), _cu, pë_ (Neapolitan), _cu, pi_ (Sicilian), with _raddoppio fonosintattico_, [kom'me], [kum'me], [kum'mia].


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## fdb

bearded man said:


> Yes



I hope you realise that you are saying exactly the opposite of Swatters.


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## bearded

fdb said:


> I hope you realise that you are saying exactly the opposite of Swatters.


I referred to the part ''open-syllable nasal vowels that were denasalised'' in Swatters' statement.  I think Swatters attributes (like I do) the gemination to the denasalisation process - although his opinion is perhaps not so clearly expressed. But maybe I have misunderstood him.


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## Nino83

What I understood (maybe I misunderstood Swatters' words) is that the first /n/ indicates the nasalization of the preceeding vowel, as it was in Middle French. 
Com [kõ] - me [mə] > com-me [kõ.mə].


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## Swatters

OK, let's rephrase.

In Old French, all vowels nasalised before /n/ and /m/, leaving for example the descendants of BONUM and BONAM as /'bɔ̃n/ and /'bɔ̃.nə/. At this point, they're mostly spelled <bon> and <bone>.

By the 16th century, (I'm iffy on the exact timeline), French had lost coda nasal consonants and was in the process of losing most open-syllable nasal vowels that were followed by a nasal consonant, with /ɑ̃/ and /ɔ̃/ still resisting. This gives /'bɔ̃/ and /'bɔ̃.nə/, spelled <bon> and <bonne>, which makes a lot of sense. At no point does this double orthographic consonant indicates a phonological geminate or long consonant.

Open syllable /ɑ̃/ and /ɔ̃/ are then lost when followed by a nasal consonant, as are word-final /ə/, leading to the modern /bõ/ and /bɔn/. This leads to a loss of meaning for <nn> and <mm>. They don't even indicate the absence of nasalisation: _Comme _and _Rome _rhyme, and _ennui, emmène _and a few other exceptions have kept their nasal vowels.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> I think that the correct reply to River's original question should be: _com/cum _became _comme _in order to avoid the nasal sound.


That is definitely wrong. In early modern French the _o_ in _comme _*was *nasalized. The first _m_ indicates the nasalization of _o_ and the second _m_ was pronounced as today. So, early modern French had the sequence of a nasalized vowel and _n/m_ which today has disappeared (i.e. nasal vowels in front of _n/m_ are today de-nasalized), except in combinations like _grand-mère_. At the time of Molière _grand-mère _and _grammaire _were still homophone as we can tell from his wordplay here.


bearded man said:


> I think Swatters attributes (like I do) the gemination to the denasalisation process


The is impossible because the gemination is older than the de-nasalization which did not occur before the 18th century.


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## bearded

@ bernd f
OK I misunderstood the whole issue.  My bad.


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