Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/669

 LANGUAGE.] FRANCE 633 reduced through d find dh, appears in the 12th century and later as t, rhyming on ordinary French final t Picard and Burgundian pcchict (2&amp;gt;eccdtui), apcleit (appclldtum). In Western French some final ths were saved by being changed to /-Modern French soif (aitim), jnaftt/( obsolete, modum). Kngli.sli has one or two instances of final th, none of medial elkfaith (foi, fidcm); Middle English car Help (charile, carUdtem), dndf (Old French dnt, Teutonic drud); generally the consonant is lost country, clutrity. Middle High German shows the Eastern French final consonant moral itcit (moralite, mural itdt cm). (11.) T from Latin final t, if in an Old French unaccented syllable, begins to disappear in the Roland, where sometimes aimct (aniat), sometimes aimr, is required by the metre, and soon drops in all dialects. The Modern French t of aimc-t-il and similar forms is an analogical insertion from such forms as dort-il (donnit), where the t has always existed. (12.) The change of the diphthong a I to ii and afterwards to ie (the doubling indicates length) had not taken place in the earliest French documents, words with ai assonating only on words with a ; in the Roland such assonances occur, but those of ai on e are more trequffatfaire (facerc) assonating on parastrc (pat raster) and on estcs (estis); and the M.S. (half a century later than the poem) occa sionally has ei and e for ai rccleimet (rccldmat), desfcrc (disfacerc), the latter agreeing with the Modern French sound. Before nasals (as in lainc ldnam) and ie (as in paye^pac&tum), ai remained a diphthong up to the 16th century, being apparently ci, whose fate in this situation it has followed. English shows ai regularly before nasals and when final, and in a few other words rain (vain, rdnum), pay (payer, jidcdrc), wait (gucttcr, Teutonic wahten); but before most consonants it has usually ee peace (pais, pdccm), feat (fait, fact um). (13. ) The loss or transposition of i ( y-consonant) follow ing the consonant ending an accented syllable begins in the 12th century Early Old French glorie (gloriam), cstudie (studium), olie (oleum); Modern French gloire, etude, hiti/e. English sometimes shows the earlier form glory, study; sometimes the later doirer (douairc, Early Old French doarie, dotdrium), oil (huilc). (14.) The vocalization of I preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant becomes frequent at the end of the 12th century ; when preceded by open e, an a developed before the I while this was a consonant llth century salse (salsa), bcltet (bcHildtcm), solder (soli Jure); Modern French sauce, bcaute, souder. In Parisian, final el followed the fate of el before a consonant, becoming the triphthong eau, but in Nor man the vocalization did not take place, and the I was afterwards rejected Modern French ruisseau, Modern Guernsey russe (rlvi- cellum). English words of French origin sometimes show I before a consonant, but the general form is u scald (echaudcr, cxcaliddrc), Walter (Gautier, Teutonic JPaldhari); sauce, beauty, sodcr. Final el is kept veal (veau, vitcllum), seal (sccau, sigillum). (15.) In the east and centre ei changes to bi, while the older sound is retained in the north-west and west Norman estreit (etroit, strictum), prcie (proie, praedam), 12th century Picard, Parisian, &c. cstroit, proie. But the earliest (10th century) specimens of the latter group of dialects have ei pleicr (jnoyer, plicdrc) Enlalia, mcttrcict (melt rait, mittcrc habebat) Jonah. Parisian bi, whether from ci or from Old French bi, 6i, became in the loth century lie (spellings with one or oe are not uncommon miroucr for miroir, mlrdtoriuiii), and in the following, in certain words, e, now written aifrancais, connaitrc, trom franco is (franccis,franciscum), conoistrc (conuistre, coyiwsccrc); where it did not undergo the latter change it is now ua or wa roi (rci, regcm), croix (ends, cruccm). Before nasals and palatal I, ci (now e) was kept vcinc (vena), vcille (vigild), and it everywhere survives unlabialized in Modern Norman Guernsey etclle (ttoilc, stella) with e, ser (soir, serum) with e. English shows generally ei (or ai) for original ei strait (cstrcit), jtrcy (prcic); but in several words the later Parisian oi coy (coi, qvietum), loyal (loyal, legdlcm). (16.) The splitting of the vowel- sound from accented Latin d or u not in position, represented in Old French by o and u indifferently, into u, o (before nasals), and cu (the latter at first a diphthong, now = German o), is unknown to Western French till the 12th century, and is not general in the east. The sound in llth century Norman was much nearer to u (Modern French ou) than to 6 (Modern French 6), as the words borrowed by English show uu (at first written u, afterwards ou or ou-), never 66 ; but was probably not quite u, as Modern Norman shows the same splitting of the sound as Parisian. Examples are Early Old French csposc or cspu-sc (sponsam), nom or num (nomen), flor or flur (florcm); Modern French e pouse, noin, fleur; Modern Guernsey goulc ((juculc, gulam), nom,fllcur. Modern Picard also shows if, which is the regular sound before r flour ; but Modern Burgundian often keeps the original Old French 6 vo (wus, vos). English shows almost always uu spouse, noun, flower (Early Middle English spuse, nun, flur) ; but nephew with eu (nevcu, itcpdtem). (17.) The loss of the u (or w) of qu dates from the end of the 12th century Old French quart (quart um), quiticr (qnetdrc) with qukw, Modern French quart, quitter with qu = k. In Walloon the w is preserved coudr (quart), cuittcr; as is the case in English quart, quit. The w of gw seems to have been lost rather earlier, English having simple g gags (gay, older guage, Teutonic iradi), guise (guise, Teutonic wlsd). (18.) The change of the diphthong ou to uu did not take place till after the 12th century, such words as Anjou (Andegdvum) assonating in tho Roland on fort (fortcm); and did not occur in Picardy, where oil became au caus from older cous, cdls (cous, collos) coinciding with caus from cah (chauds. calidds). English keeps ou distinct from uu vault for rant (Modern French voutc, rohitam), sodcr (souder, soliddrc). (19.) The change of the diphthong ie to simple e is specially Anglo-Norman ; in Old French of the Continent these sounds never rhyme, in that of England they constantly do, and English words show, with rare exceptions, the simple vowel- fierce (Old French jicrs, ferns), chief (chief, cajmt), with ie = cc but pannier (punier, pandrium). At the beginning of the modern period, Parisian dropped the i of ie when preceded by ch or j chef, abreger (O]d French abrcgier, abbreridrc); elsewhere (except in verbs) ie is retained fier (fcrum), iritie (picldtcm). Modern Guernsey retains ic after ch aprchier (approchcr, adpropcdre). (20.) Some of the Modern French changes have found their places under older ones; those remaining to be noticed are so recent that English examples of the older forms are superfluous. In the 16th century the diphthong au changed to ao and then to 6, its present sound, rendering, for instance, maux (Old French mals, malos) identical with mots (muttus). The au of cau underwent the same change, but its c was still sounded as o (the c of quc); in the next century this was dropped, making vcaux (Old French feels, vitellos) identical with vaux (vals, miles). (21.) A more general and very important change began much earlier than the last ; this is the loss of many final consonants. In Early Old French every consonant was pro nounced as written ; by degrees many of them disappeared when followed by another consonant, whether in the same word (in which case they were generally omitted in writing) or in a following one. This was the state of things in the 16th century; those final con sonants which are usually silent in Modern French were still sounded, if before a vowel or at the end of a sentence or a line of poetry, but generally not elsewhere. Thus a large number of French words had two forms; the Old French fort appeared as for (though still written fort) before a consonant, fort elsewhere. At a later period final consonants were lost (with certain exceptions) when the word stood at the end of a sentence or of a line of poetry; but they are generally kept when followed by a word beginning with a vowel. (22.) A still later change is the general loss of the vowel (written c) of unaccented final syllables ; this vowel preserved in the 16th century the sound y, which it appears to have had in Early Old French. In later Anglo-Norman final 9 (like every other sound) was treated exactly as the same sound in Middle English; that is, it came to be omitted or retained at pleasure, and in the 15th century disappeared. In Old French the loss of final o is con fined to a few words and forms ; the 10th century savciet (sajyebat for sapiebal) became in the llth savcit, and ore (ad horam), cle (illam) develop the abbreviated or, el. In the 15th century 9 before a vowel generally disappears mur, Old French ineur(mdlurum); and in the 16th, though still written, s after an unaccented vowel, and in the syllable ent after a vowel, does the same vraiment, Old French vraicment (rented mentc); avoicnt two syllables, as now (avaicnt), in Old French three syllables (as fuibebant). These phenomena occur much earlier in the anglicized French of England 14th cen tury arcynt (Old French ardent). But the universal loss of final e, which has clipped a syllable from half the French vocabulary, did not take place till the 18th century, after the general loss of final consonants ; fort and forte, distinguished at the end of a sentence or line in the 16th century us fort a.ud forty, remain distinguished, but asfbr and fort. The metre of poetry is still constructed on the obsolete pronunciation, which is even revived in singing; &quot;dites, la jeune belle,&quot; actually four syllables (dit, la zha-ii bel), is con sidered as seven, fitted with music accordingly, and sung to fit the music (dity, la zh&nv bih). (23.) In Old French, as in the other Romanic languages, the stress (force, accent) is on the syllable which was accented in Latin; compare the treatment of the accented and unaccented vowels in latro, amds, giving lere, dime, and in latroncm, amdtis, giving Iar6n, amez, the accented vowels being those which rhyme or assonate. At present, stress in French is much less marked than in English, German, or Italian, and is to a certain extent variable ; which is partly the reason why most native French scholars find no difficulty in maintaining that the stress in living Modern French is on the same syllable as in Old French. The fact that stress in the French of to-day is independent of length (quantity) and pitch (tone) largely aids the confusion ; for though the final and originally accented syllable (not counting the silent c as a syllable) is now generally pronounced with less force, it very often has a long vowel with raised pitch. In actual pronunciation the chief stress is usually on the first syllable (counting according to the sounds, not the spelling), but in many polysyllables it is on the last but one ; thus in caution the accented (strong) syllable is cau, in occasion it is ca. Poetry is still written according to the original place of the stress; the rhyme-syllables of larron, aimcz are still ran and mcz, which when set to music receive an accented (strong) note, and are sung accordingly, though in speech the la IX. 80