French. You're a relative of Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages, so why do you
sound deceptively different? I mean, why is "acqua" just /o/? How are "cambiar" and "casa"
related to "changer" and "chez"? What's the story behind the changes that make your pronunciation
so, well, unique?
Euh, pardon, let me find where this starts... ah voilà! So say you wanted to create a language
that turns out just like French. Well, follow the following recipe. Precisely. Ahem.
Start preparing your ingredients two thousand years ago. Take a base of Latin. Combine traces
of Gaulish. Because Celtic words will become sources of change. Including, literally, the
word change.
I must emphasize: do not use fresh Latin for your base. Let it go bad. Ideally wait three
centuries until this stickler scribe pens terse corrections, disciplining people to
speak "good" Latin, not "bad" Latin. "Good" Latin, not "bad" Latin. Make sure you keep
the bad: the oricla, lancia, an aitchless aduc... Imperfections like these set you up
for a unique bake.
So far what you've mixed works for any Romance language. Spread it out from Portugal to Wallonia.
Gradually incorporate sound shifts. Not uniformly. Work them in to form a nice continuum where
the edges look distinct but locally it's similar from place to place. It's guesswork at this
stage to be honest, but make sure to include these changes throughout the age.
Soften ptk to bdg, then βðγ, then (shh). From vi[t]a and a[kw]a and se[k]uru make
[viðə] and [aɣwə] and [seɣur], and you're a step away
from early French [viə], [ewə], [səur].
Shorten two consonants to one: less Italian lèttera, more letre.
Indulge the palate, j-ing kʲ, tʲ, bʲ until a [kʲ]eresia is a [t͡sʲ]erisa, [g]ent-
becomes [d͡ʒ]ent, and cambiare is cangiar, one step closer to change. And squeeze /j/s
out of fact and lact, [fajtʲ] and [lajtʲ].
These are "changes" any "sage" out there may "sache", may already know.
Rework Rome's five neat short and long vowels into seven: i e ɛ a ɔ o u. And open up ɛ and
ɔ even more into [i͡ɛ] and [u͡ɔ], taking the word for foot from ancient pĕdĕm to
medieval [pi͡ɛ].
If sp, sk, st are especially sticky at this point, add vowels until your state is less Romanian stat,
more Old French estat, and what's written is no longer a script but an escript.
Ok, go chill your Western Romance dough. I know it's early, but I've invited some guests.
Here they are at the door. (Knocking.) Hallo? Ja, it's the Franks. They go on to say you've
been neighbors for a while. Now they're here to name your country and speak this language
you've been working on. Also, they suggest adding Germanic Frankish words.
Just a few. Hundred.
They hand you a manuscript with an oath sworn in 842 by two grandsons of Charlemagne. One
side swore in Frankish. The other vowed nearly the same lines in what they hastily called
Romana. In ink they capture your earlier changes: an aitchless om, softened aiudha,
and au is now a lost c[oː]sa.
Roll with this. Roll out your language dough until words are stressed with an inténse accént
and final vowels drop off: amur, cist. Except -a, which you should
weaken down to [ə] like [koːsə].
Oh, did I say to ditch haitch? At this stage, patch in a new aitch, Germanic h- like in
"hache". Even add it to some Romance words like "haut". This will create fun quirks
when we oust aitches again.
Take the voice out of final consonants, shifting u͡ɔ[v] to u̯ɛ[f] and gran[d] to gran[t].
Ooh, and manipulate mid vowels to ei̯ and i̯e, and ou̯ and u̯e.
Make L ("el") after a vowel more of an "ew": s[aɯ̯]ce.
Before you incorporate any more changes, you want to cut out one section from this dough.
Split it up at the word for "yes". In the south of France it's "oc". Up north it's a mesh of "oïl".
(In Spain and Italy, "si".) Well, to make what we today call French,
just work with those northern "oïl" varieties.
A thousand years into this recipe, it's time to dock and bake
Old French throughout the High Middle Ages.
Peek into the oven to see ka's cha-ing, turning
cange into change, a cat into a chat and castles into chastels.
Except near the northern coast, so England borrows Norman candles not "chandles"
but a double-take of both "canal" and "channel".
Then check if multiple [a]s are shifting to [e]: ague to ewe and caval to cheval. It's
ok if they go as far as [ie]: from "cap" to "chef" or "chief". Or a can-ine "chien".
The vowel u in se[u]r should now sound like se[y]r. And o in o-ïl should turn into [ʊ-iw]
and eventually, yes, ou-i!
At the end of the Old French period, watch and wait. You might think the sound of French-French
would come from a single dialect in Paris. Instead, observe as it arises from social
changes and urbanization bringing together people who speak many varieties of Oïl.
The oven timer goes off. It's 1300 and your beautifully baked case shines with some of
the prestige that Latin once had. Let's prepare to layer on Middle French.
Melt the m[ei̯] that was "me" to m[oi̯] then m[u̯ε]. And the [ai̯] in lai̯tʲ
to lɛt. The "eu" of old pu̯et or peu̯t is from here on /ø/. Vowels before N and
M will flow through the nose now: [bʊn] becomes [bõn].
Heat your slurry until a new set of long vowels seeps out. Where esses break down, [gʊːtə]
is merely longer than [gʊtə]. And where two vowels ooze into one, in Old French you
were seür, well now you're [syːr].
Dissolve complex consonants. No longer [t͡s]erise but [s]erise. No longer "quand" and "qui"
but [kãnt] and [ki]. And sa[t͡ʃ]e and sa[d͡ʒ]e cook down to sa[ʃ]e and sa[ʒ]e.
I was going to say pull Middle French off the heat at this point, but you know what?
Keep this caramel going. Melt away more sounds at the end of words throughout the French
Renaissance: chat, trouver, even ə in [syːɾ]. You're doing it right when
many loups sound identical to one lone loup.
And turn those nasal vowels into a critical distinction from here on out:
[a] is a preposition but [ã], later [ɑ̃], means year.
As this cools, it should be teeming with unpredictable letters.
(Ah, in other words, French spelling. There you are!)
No longer do you read the s, the p or the t in escript.
Pour these changes into your shell and watch spelling reformers grapple with their stickiness,
concocting accent marks and new letters to deal with them.
Now for a thick ganache of kingdom and colonization that will spread your French-so-far even farther.
Everywhere, temper au and eau to [o] and [o]. But when Québec gets cold, don't cover up
their archaic [frεt]. And keep [mwe] and [twe] while Paris spends a half-century before
the Revolution shifting to [twa] and [mwa]. Gwadloup creole will retain an old h in [h]anga
and [h]alé. And Amazonian Kheuól will inventively mash three and a third words together into
one zabapẽ for "breadfruit".
And from Tahiti to Louisiane to the continent with more French speakers than any other,
l'Afrique, as this era cools and sets, /r/ will sometimes remain a trill.
Remain, because after periods of Révolution and Napoléon, a new [ʁ] is stirred into
Paris. For many [ʁ] will replace [r], and while it does, you pour on a layer thick with
your most epicurean changes yet.
Coat those reemerged long vowels until by the mid 1900s only a slight flavor remains:
patte or pâte, Québec bette or bête. In Paris you should even hear
bête merge into bette, and, well, pâte is patte.
Although you attempted to melt all final consonants, they've been viscous enough to stick to vowels.
Indulge this, tacking gr[ɑ̃] to gr[ɑ̃‿t]ami and [lɛ] to [lɛ‿z]amis.
And remember those Frankish haitches? Pronounce them no more, but make sure they don't stick.
What a fun rule for students to have to remember:
H- that isn't and wasn't is sticky. H- that isn't but was isn't.
Hence les hôtes but les hautes.
Round weak ə to mang[ø], p[ø]tit. Or even smooth it away as you pour: mange, p'tit.
Fill to the brim and tap until your French sounds not like words but rhythm groups, syllables
freely cutting across words, ə dropp'd or added-ə, to r'fine the rhythm-ə, until you
accenntə, the final syllable.
Oh look, you've made quite a mess. Don't clean up yet. Garnish with the latest changes.
Shift œ̃ to ɛ̃, then even ɛ̃ to æ̃. (Confuse pot and peau.) And push ɔ in d'acc[ɔ]rd toward d'acc[œ]rd.
And end rhythm groups with a heavy, breathy vowel: T'as entend[y̥ç] ? Ou[i̥çː] !
Whew. You've now prepared a contemporary French, ready to serve. And you have a recipe to
hand down and adjust for the next thousand years of French's shifting sounds.
If you're eager to learn more and get into the details, my sources doc is made for you.
The names you see now are some of my patrons, for whom I posted thoughts and art
during the months it took me to put this together.
Thank you for your patient and positive support.
Merci tout le monde ! Stick around and subscribe for language.