|
French exhibits perhaps the most extensive phonetic changes (from Latin) of any of the Romance languages. Similar changes are seen in some of the northern Italian regional languages, such as Lombard or Ligurian. Most other Romance languages are significantly more conservative phonetically, with Spanish and especially Italian showing the most conservatism, and Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan and Romanian showing moderate conservatism. French also shows enormous phonetic changes between the Old French period and the modern language. Spelling, however, has barely changed, which accounts for the wide differences between current spelling and pronunciation. Some of the most profound changes have been: *The loss of almost all final consonants. *The subsequent loss of final , which caused the appearance of many newly final consonants. *The loss of the formerly strong stress that had characterized the language throughout much of its history and triggered many of the phonetic deformations. *Significant transformations in the pronunciation of vowels, especially nasal vowels. Only few of these changes are reflected in the orthography. ==Overview== A profound change in very late spoken Latin (i.e. early Common Romance, the forerunner of all the Romance languages) was the restructuring of the vowel system of classical Latin. Latin had thirteen distinct vowels: ten pure vowels (long and short versions of A, E, I, O, U) and three diphthongs (AE, OE, AU).〔In this article: * letters indicate Latin or Vulgar Latin words; * ''Italics'' indicate Old French and other Romance language words; * An *''asterisk'' marks a conjectured or hypothetical form; * Phonetic transcriptions appear , in the International Phonetic Alphabet.〕 What happened to Vulgar Latin is set forth in the table.〔These changes occurred in the majority of Vulgar Latin, specifically the Italo-Western Romance area, which underlies the vast majority of Romance languages spoken in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Andorra. However, different vowel changes occurred elsewhere, in the Vulgar Latin underlying modern Romanian, Sardinian, Corsican, and a few modern southern Italian varieties.〕 Essentially, the ten pure vowels were reduced to the seven vowels , where vowel length was no longer a distinguishing feature. The diphthongs AE and OE fell in with and , respectively. AU was retained, but in various languages (including Old French) eventually turned into after the original fell victim to further changes. Vowel length became automatically determined by syllable structure, with stressed open syllables having long vowels and other syllables having short vowels. Furthermore, the stress on accented syllables became more pronounced in Vulgar Latin than in Classical Latin. This tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. This especially applied to the new long vowels, many of which broke into diphthongs, although with different results in each of the daughter languages. Old French underwent more thorough alterations of its sound system than did the other Romance languages. Vowel breaking is observed to some extent in Spanish and Italian; e.g. Vulgar Latin "fire" (in Classical Latin, "hearth") becomes Italian ''fuoco'' and Spanish ''fuego''. But in Old French the phenomenon went further than in any other Romance language; of the seven vowels inherited from Vulgar Latin, only remained unchanged in stressed open syllables: * The sound of Latin short E, turning to in Proto-Romance, became ''ie'' in Old French: Latin , "honey" > OF ''miel'' * The sound of Latin short O > Proto-Romance > OF ''uo'', later ''ue'': > ''cuor'' > ''cuer'', "heart" * Latin long Ē and short I > Proto-Romance > OF ''ei'': > ''aveir'', "to have"; this later becomes in many words, as in ''avoir'' * Latin long Ō and short U > Proto-Romance > OF ''ou'', later ''eu'': > ''flour'', "flower" * Latin A, Ā > Proto-Romance > OF , probably through an intervening stage of ; > ''mer'', "sea" This change also characterizes the Gallo-Italic dialects of Northern Italy (cf. Bolognese ). Furthermore, all instances of Latin long Ū > Proto-Romance became , the lip-rounded sound that is written ''u'' in Modern French. This occurred in both stressed and unstressed syllables, regardless of whether open or closed. Latin AU did not share the fate of or ; Latin > OF ''or'', "gold": not *''œur'' nor *''our''. Latin AU must have been retained at the time these changes were affecting Proto-Romance. Changes affecting the consonants were also quite pervasive in Old French. Old French shared with the rest of the Vulgar Latin world the loss of final -M. Since this sound was basic to the Latin noun case system, its loss levelled the distinctions upon which the synthetic Latin syntax relied, and forced the Romance languages to adapt a more analytic syntax based on word order. Old French also dropped many internal consonants when they followed the strongly stressed syllable; Latin > Proto-Romance > OF ''pierre''; cf. Spanish ''piedra'' ("stone"). In some contexts, became , still written ''oi'' in Modern French. During the early Old French period this sound was pronounced as the writing suggests, as with stress on the front vowel: . The stress later shifted to the end position, , before becoming . This sound developed variously in different varieties of Oïl language – most of the surviving languages maintain a pronunciation as – but literary French adopted a dialectal phonology . The doublet of ''français'' and ''François'' in modern French orthography demonstrates this mix of dialectal features. At some point during the Old French period, vowels with a following nasal consonant began to be nasalized. While the process of losing the final nasal consonant took place after the Old French period, the nasal vowels that characterise modern French appeared during the period in question. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Phonological history of French」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|