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(As an Italian who has lived in France, but is now fortunately back to our sunny shores ;) ). I'm pretty sure it's something most people are taught in school wh
by carlob 11y ago
(As an Italian who has lived in France, but is now fortunately back to our sunny shores ;) ). I'm pretty sure it's something most people are taught in school when learning French. Notice that it's not just S. For example mûr is mature, so it's a whole syllable there.
There is a whole discipline called phonétique historique and all future high school French teacher have to learn it (at least the ones that pass the Agrégation), which basically tells the story of how words have transformed from their Latin to their French pronunciation. Unfortunately the approach that is taught is not rigorously scientific and you get to learn just a bunch of rules of thumb.
- pif 11y ago> most people are taught in school when learning French You probably mean: when learning French _in Italy_. If you learn it in France, there is usually no comparison with Italian or Latin, so this specific pattern is just lost.
- carlob 11y agoYes, I meant as a foreign romance language of course. My point was that it's funny that you've discovered it independently.
- bambax 11y agoI don't know what the parent meant, but I can assure you that in France you're (usually) taught that the ^ stands for a lost letter -- it's what helps remember where to put the accent.
- pif 11y agoWell, I meant: when you learn French in France _as a stranger_, they don't talk about the history of the language, thus the concept of a lost letter doesn't stand.
- gpvos 11y agoSuch courses tend to be very utilitarian, and not go into a language's history much. Although I guess it might actually be helpful to know while learning French as an Italian.
- 0x4a42 11y agoCorrect, this is something you learn in elementary school. :)
- agumonkey 11y agoI can assure you of the opposite. It has never been said to me once. I guessed it by correlating roots (foret - forestier). And globally phonetic or linguistic derivation from history was never mentioned (even in latin classes, we were taught translation but they never told about phonetic shifts). ps: I often cringed at the lack of reasoning in language studies here, I'm happy that I may be just unlucky and that you got proper information from your teachers.