# French: je



## dihydrogen monoxide

How did French get from Latin ego to its variant je, meaning personal pronoun/1.person/singular? I'm not interested in etymology but phonetical process?


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## Outsider

Seems fairly clear: ego > eo > yo > dje > je.


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## the MASTER

I know that in Argentinian Spanish, it's pronounced as /zho/ (where the zh represents the same initial sound in French je).


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Outsider said:


> Seems fairly clear: ego > eo > yo > dje > je.


 
I get the deletion of g part, how did y end up and were did d end up and dj to j sounds alright to me.


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## Outsider

The sound change [j] > [dʒ] is quite common (as The MASTER noted before he deleted his post ). From there to [ʒ] is but a small step.


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Outsider said:


> The sound change [j] > [dʒ] is quite common (as The MASTER noted before he deleted his post ). From there to [ʒ] is but a small step.


 
Thanks. Only a small correction, he didn't delete his post.


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## Frank06

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Thanks. Only a small correction, he didn't delete his post.


*I have been asked to undelete the post you're refering to. Maybe I hit the button too fast.*


the MASTER said:


> I know that in Argentinian Spanish, it's pronounced as /zho/ (where the zh represents the same initial sound in French je).


*I am quite sure that the Master will explain to us how this pertains to French "je".

Frank
Moderator EHL*


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## ronanpoirier

I always wondered about that. So one day I got my own conclusion:

Latin EGO --> Galician/Portuguese EU /ew/ --> Romanian EU /jew/ --> Spanish YO¹ /jho/, /dzho/ --> Catalan JO /zho/ --> French JE /zhê/

[jh] = in IPA it's a "j" with a hook under it
[ê] = schwa

¹: also /zho/ or /sho/ in Argentina and Uruguay.


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## CapnPrep

Have a look at the bottom of this page: TLFi entry. The general development is pretty well established: something like what Outsider outlined in #2. But there were lots of competing forms in the Old French period, and the modern unstressed form _je_ could conceivably be derived from more than one of these intermediate forms.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> Seems fairly clear: ego > eo > yo > dje > je.


The form _dje_ is knew to me. In Old French I have seen _ge, jie, gie_ and a few more but not _dje_. Are you sure about this?


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## Outsider

It was just my _ad hoc_ way of indicating an affricate pronunciation, not a historical spelling.


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## berndf

Do you think "ge" was historically pronounced "dje" in Old French? In modern French "ge" and "je" would be pronounced identically.


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## Outsider

I think that _ie_ or _io_ (or _gie_, etc.) were at one point pronounced with a [dʒ] or a very similar sound to this, which later became [ʒ].


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## sokol

berndf said:


> Do you think "ge" was historically pronounced "dje" in Old French? In modern French "ge" and "je" would be pronounced identically.


Phonetically there is very little difference between "gje" and "dje", if any at all - that is, if we speak here of a voiced palatal affricate. See the IPA chart:
http://weston.ruter.net/projects/ipa-chart/view/keyboard/
[By the way also could be used to type IPA.]

Usually sounds written "gj" and "dj" would be represented with IPA [ɟ] (= voiced plosive) or [dʑ] (= voiced affricate); you pronounce this sound "in-between" /g/ and /d/, and you also hear it as being somewhere between the two. Or if you don't have this sound in your mother tongue and you aren't accustomed to hearing it you might think you've just heard either /g/ or /d/ (or the corresponding affricate [dʒ]) - both is possible.

So I think it is rather pointless to argue wether it had been "gje" or "dje". And further the transition "gje" (however written) to "je" is just a very natural one, phonetical distance between both is minimal.

The biggest step in the line given above from Outsider would not be this one but the one from "yo" > "(g)je": and with this I don't mean the consonant.
(As IPA [j] of "yo" very easily can move on to [ɟ] or [dʑ]; in modern Spanish it is [dʒ] or similar even in standard language(s), I'm not sure where exactly the pronunciation is located on the palatum of a native speaker, [dʒ] is just my personal impression from hearing the sound from natives).
Because I would consider the weakening of /o/ to /e/ as a bigger step; but not an unlikely one if you look at the development of modern French.

All in all I'd say the change from "ego" to "je" is not full of a great many mysteries; probably there are some, but no big ones surely.


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## CapnPrep

I think the question was just whether or not there ever was an affricate, not the precise phonetic identity of this affricate (which I agree is not really worth arguing about). 

And the standard answer is yes: Word-initial yod in Latin became _dž_ (using traditional, idealized Romanist phonetic notation) in the 3rd century, and this pronunciation lasted for a thousand years until all affricates were simplified (_ts, dz, __tš, *dž*_ > _s, z, __š_,* ž*) in the late 12th/13th century. 

The development of initial yod merged with that of _g + i/__e_ (gentem > _gent_), and later _g _+ _a_ (gamba > _jambe_), which helps explain the spelling of the form "gie".


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> I think the question was just whether or not there ever was an affricate, not the precise phonetic identity of this affricate (which I agree is not really worth arguing about).


This was indeed by question. Thank you for the explanation. So the "g" in "ge" was [dʒ] in Old French.


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## the MASTER

*I am quite sure that the Master will explain to us how this pertains to French "je".*

My comment was simply an observation that the first person singular subject/nominative pronoun was pronounced in a similar way in two languages derived from Latin, showing that the French pronunciation was not an isolated phenomenon!


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