Date: 07 Apr 2000 13:30:01 +0200 From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no> To: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSDCon East Message-ID: <xzpya6qp2rq.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> In-Reply-To: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de's message of "6 Apr 2000 23:59:44 %2B0200" References: <20000404152346.01398@techunix.technion.ac.il> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004042145500.88181-100000@freefall.freebsd.org> <8cgj1a$313f$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <v04220805b511f7c7e2a6@[195.238.1.121]> <8cj1cg$1gse$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de>
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naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) writes:
> Admittedly the reverse direction is something of a problem, since
> there are often many (combinations of) letters that map to the same
> sound as well as all those silent final consonants. You can observe
> the difficulties this causes for native speakers over on the French
> language newsgroups (fr.*).
It's only a problem if they didn't pay attention in class. Bar a few
exceptions, there are good ethymological reasons for most spellings,
and given a rudimentary knowledge of latin (which is complusory in
French schools) and a sufficient base of other words to compare with,
it shouldn't take more than a few seconds' thought to determine the
correct spelling of a word with which you're not yet familiar.
Even English and German are useful to understanding French... for
instance, the circumflex (which seems to be the most confusing
diacritical mark for most non-native speakers) nearly always indicates
an elided s in the latin root of the word, and the corresponding
English or German word usually still has that s (host / hôte, feast /
fête, paste / pâte, etc.) - unless it is used on the letter u, where
it indicates a contracted -urus (sûr, from securus; mûr, from
maturus).
Acute and grave accents, when used on the letter e, have more complex
ethymologies, but are easily deduced from pronunciation (as long as
you remember when *not* to use them - briefly, don't put a grave
accent on an e followed by two consonants).
Diareses have the same function in French as in English - to quote the
Webster: "a mark {umlaut} placed over a vowel to to [sic] indicate
that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable (as in naïve,
Brontë)"
DES
--
Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@flood.ping.uio.no
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