Phonological history of French

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, Italian, and especially Sardinian 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 occasional elision of final , which caused 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 changes.
*Significant transformations in the pronunciation of vowels, especially nasal vowels.

Only some of the changes are reflected in the orthography, which generally corresponds to the pronunciation of c. 1100–1200 CE (the Old French period) rather than modern pronunciation.

This page documents the phonological history of French from a relatively technical standpoint. See also History of French#Internal history for a less technical introduction.

Overview

A profound change in very late spoken Latin (Vulgar Latin, 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). What happened to Vulgar Latin is set forth in the table.

Essentially, the ten pure vowels were reduced to the seven vowels , and vowel length was no longer a distinguishing feature. The diphthongs ae and oe fell in with and , respectively. Au was retained, but various languages (including Old French) eventually turned it into after the original fell victim to further changes.

The complex but regular French sound changes have caused irregularities in the conjugation of Old French verbs, like stressed stems caused by historic diphthongization (''amer'', ''aim'', ''aimes'', ''aime'', ''aiment'', but ''amons'', ''amez''), or regular loss of certain phonemes (''vivre'', ''vif'', ''vis'', ''vit''). Later in Modern French, these changes were limited to fewer irregular verbs. Modern French also had lost the class of rather unpredictable ''-ier'' verbs (resulting from ejection of /j/ into the infinitive suffix ''-āre'', which still exists in some '' langues d'oïl''), having been replaced by simple ''-er'' verbs plus ''-i'' instead, as in ''manier'', but Old French ''laissier'' → ''laisser''.

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. That tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. That especially applied to the new long vowels, many of which broke into diphthongs but with different results in each daughter language.

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: Vulgar Latin focu(s) "fire" (in Classical Latin, "hearth") becomes Italian ''fuoco'' and Spanish ''fuego''. In Old French, it went even 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 mel, "honey" > OF ''miel''
* The sound of Latin short o > Proto-Romance > OF ''uo'', later ''ue'': cor > ''cuor'' > ''cuer'', "heart"
* Latin long ē and short i > Proto-Romance > OF ''ei'': habēre > ''aveir'', "to have"; this later becomes in many words, as in ''avoir''
* Latin long ō and short u > Proto-Romance > OF ''ou'', later ''eu'': flōrem > ''flour'', "flower"
* Latin a, ā > Proto-Romance > OF , probably through an intervening stage of ; mare > ''mer'', "sea". That change also characterizes the Gallo-Italic languages 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. That occurred in both stressed and unstressed syllables, regardless of whether open or closed.

Latin au did not share the fate of or ; Latin aurum > OF ''or'', "gold": not *''œur'' nor *''our''. Latin au must have been retained at the time such changes were affecting Proto-Romance.

Changes affecting consonants were also quite pervasive in Old French. Old French shared with the rest of the Vulgar Latin world the loss of final -M. Old French also dropped many internal consonants when they followed the strongly stressed syllable; Latin petram > Proto-Romance > OF ''pierre''; cf. Spanish ''piedra'' ("stone").

In some contexts, became , still written ''oi'' in Modern French. During the early Old French period, it was pronounced as the writing suggests, as as a falling diphthong: . It later shifted to become rising, , before becoming . The sound developed variously in different varieties of Oïl: most of the surviving languages maintain a pronunciation as , but Literary French adopted a dialectal pronunciation, . The doublet of ''français'' and ''François'' in modern French orthography demonstrates the 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 characterize Modern French appeared during the period in question.

Table of vowel outcomes

The following table shows the most important modern outcomes of Vulgar Latin vowels, starting from the seven-vowel system of Proto-Western Romance stressed syllables: . The vowels developed differently in different contexts, with the most important contexts being:
* "Open" syllables (followed by at most one consonant), where most of the vowels were diphthongized or otherwise modified.
* Syllables followed by a palatal consonant. An usually appeared before the palatal consonant, producing a diphthong, which subsequently evolved in complex ways. There were various palatal sources: Classical Latin (e.g. peiorFound as ''pēior'' "worse" in many 19th and 20th century editions, but was actually pronounced , with a short followed by a geminate ; writing the macron is a convention to mark the resulting syllable weight. "worse"); any consonant followed by a coming from Latin short or in hiatus (e.g. balneum "bath", palātium "palace"); or followed by or (e.g. pācem "peace", cōgitō "I think"); or followed by and preceded by , or (e.g. plāga "wound"); or after a vowel in various sequences, such as (e.g. noctem "night", veclum < vetulum "old", nigrum "black").
* Syllables preceded by a palatal consonant. An appeared after the palatal consonant, producing a rising diphthong. The palatal consonant could arise in any of the ways just described. In addition, it could stem from an earlier brought into contact with a following consonant by loss of the intervening vowel: e.g. medietātem > Proto-Romance > Gallo-Romance (loss of unstressed vowels) > Proto-French (palatalization) > Old French > ''moitié'' "half".
* Nasal syllables (followed by an or ), where nasal vowels arose. Nasal syllables inhibited many of the changes that otherwise happened in open syllables; instead, vowels tended to be raised. Subsequently, the following or was deleted unless a vowel followed, and the nasal vowels were lowered; but when the or remained, the nasal quality was lost, with no lowering of the vowel. This produced significant alternations, such as masculine ''fin'' vs. feminine ''fine'' .
* Syllables closed by followed by another consonant. By Old French times, this was " debuccalized" into , which was subsequently lost, with a phonemic long vowel taking its place. These long vowels remained for centuries, and continued to be indicated by an ''s'', and later a circumflex, with alternations such as ''bette'' "chard" vs. ''bête'' (formerly ) "beast" (borrowed from bēstiam). Sometimes the length difference was accompanied by a difference in vowel quality, e.g. ''mal'' "bad" vs. ''mâle'' "male" (Latin māsculum < ). Phonemic (although not phonetic) length disappeared from Parisian French by the 18th century, but survived regionally (now especially in Belgian French).
* Syllables closed by followed by another consonant (although the sequence ''-lla-'' was not affected). The vocalized to , producing a diphthong, which then developed in various ways.
* Syllables where two or more of the above conditions occurred simultaneously, which generally evolved in complex ways. Common examples are syllables followed by both a nasal and a palatal element (e.g. from Latin -neu-, -nea-, -nct-); open syllables preceded by a palatal (e.g. cēram "wax"); syllables both preceded and followed by a palatal (e.g. iacet "it lies"); syllables preceded by a palatal and followed by a nasal (e.g. canem "dog").

Note that the developments in unstressed syllables were both simpler and less predictable. In Proto-Western Romance, there were only five vowels in unstressed syllables: , as low-mid vowels were raised to . These syllables were not subject to diphthongization and many of the other complex changes that affected stressed syllables. This produced many lexical and grammatical alternations between stressed and unstressed syllables. However, there was a strong tendency (especially beginning in the Middle French period, when the formerly strong stress accent was drastically weakened) to even out these alternations. In certain cases in verbal paradigms an unstressed variant was imported into stressed syllables, but mostly it was the other way around, with the result that in Modern French all of the numerous vowels can appear in unstressed syllables.

"Context" refers to the syllable context at the Vulgar Latin or Gallo-Romance stage. The contexts are as follows:
* An "open" context is a stressed syllable followed by at most a single consonant at the Vulgar Latin stage.
* A "closed" context is any other syllable type (unstressed, or followed by two or more consonants).
* A "late closed" context is a context that is open at the Vulgar Latin (Proto-Romance) stage but becomes closed in the Gallo-Romance stage due to loss an unstressed vowel (usually or in a final syllable).
* A "palatal" context is a stressed syllable where the ''preceding'' consonant has a palatal quality, causing a yod to be generated after the preceding consonant, before the stressed vowel.

Changes that occurred due to contexts that developed during the Old French stage or later are indicated in the "Modern French" column. In particular, "+#" indicates a word-final context in modern French, which generally evolved due to loss of a final consonant in Old French or Middle French. For example, loss of in ''aimé'' "loved" (originally ) occurred in Old French, while loss of in ''sot'' "silly" occurred in Middle French (hence its continuing presence in spelling, which tends to reflect later Old French).

Both and occur in modern French, and there are a small number of minimal pairs, e.g. ''jeune'' "young" vs. ''jeûne'' "fast (abstain from food)". In general, however, only occurs word-finally, before , and usually before , while occurs elsewhere.

However, the sequences from multiple origins regularly dissimilate to (and later ) except after labials and velars (Latin ''locus'' → → ''lieu'' , but ''*volet'' → → ''veut'' ).

The changes producing French ''moitié'' were approximately as follows:
# medietātem (Classical/Late Latin form)
# (pronunciation c. 1 AD)
# (Proto-Romance form, with > and loss of vowel length)
# (loss of intertonic )
# (late palatalization of by preceding )
# (first lenition of second , but first one protected by preceding consonant )
# (lengthening of stressed vowel in open syllable)
# (Gallo-Romance loss of final unstressed )
# (second lenition)
# (final devoicing)
# (Proto-French changes in "palatal + open" context, with the long reflecting the former open-syllable context)
# (Early Old French vowel changes)
# (Late Old French changes: > , > , loss of )
# (Changes to Middle French: > , final > )
# (Changes to modern French: > )

Chronological history

From Vulgar Latin through to Proto-Western Romance

*Introduction of prosthetic short before words beginning with + consonant, becoming closed with the Romance vowel change (Spanish ''espina'', Modern French ''épine'' "thorn, spine" < ''espine'' < ).
*Reduction of ten-vowel system of Vulgar Latin to seven vowels ( see table); diphthongs and reduced to and ; maintenance of diphthong.
*Loss of final (except in monosyllables: Modern French ''rien'' < rem).
*Loss of .
* > .
* > in some words (dorsum > Vulgar Latin ''*dossu'' > Modern French ''dos'') but not others (ursum > Modern French ''ours'').
*Final > , > (Spanish ''cuatro, sobre'' < quattuor, super).
*Vulgar Latin unstressed vowel loss: Loss of intertonic (unstressed and in an interior syllable) vowels between , and , .
*Reduction of and in hiatus to , followed by palatalization. Palatalization of and before front vowels.
** is apparently doubled to prior to palatalization.
** and (from , , and before a front vowel) become .

To Proto-Gallo-Ibero-Romance

* and merge, becoming (still treated as a single sound).
* > and > ; first going through and , respectively.
*First diphthongation (only in some dialects): diphthongation of , to , (later, > ) in stressed, open syllables. That also happens in closed syllables before a palatal, often later absorbed: pēior >> > >> ''pire'' "worst"; noctem > > >> ''nuit''; but tertium > >> ''tierz''.
*First lenition (did not happen in a small area around the Pyrenees): chain shift involving intervocalic or word-final consonants: voiced stops and unvoiced fricatives become voiced fricatives (, , ); unvoiced stops become voiced stops. (from , ) is pronounced as a single sound and voiced to , but (from , ) is geminate and so is not voiced. Consonants before are lenited, also, and > . Final and when following a vowel are lenited.
*, , , (from Vulgar Latin , , , , respectively) become and , respectively.
*First unstressed vowel loss: Loss of intertonic (unstressed and in an interior syllable) vowels except when pretonic. That occurred at the same time as the first lenition, and individual words inconsistently show one change before the other. Hence manica > ''manche'' but grānica > ''grange''. carricāre becomes either ''charchier'' or ''chargier'' in Old French. However, in some analyses, the standard for central French was initially for lenition to occur before the unstressed vowel apocope, and patterns of the order being reversed, resulting in voiceless consonants, were loaned from the more Frankish-influenced Northern dialects of Normandy, Champagne and Lorrain, eventually spreading to some other words by analogy, leading to known cases of divergent development, such as ''grange'' and ''granche'', and ''venger'' and ''(re)vencher'' (the latter both from Latin vindicāre).

To Early Old French

*Spread and dissolution of palatalization:
**A protected not preceded by a vowel, when stemming from an initial or from a , or when preceded by a consonant, became chiefly via fortition then affrication: Vulgar Latin → Late Gallo-Roman → Early Old French .
**A followed by another consonant tends to palatalize that consonant; the consonants may have been brought together by intertonic loss (medietātem > > > ''moitié'', peior > > > ''pire'', but impeiorāre > > > > OF ''empoirier'' "to worsen").
**Palatalized sounds lose their palatal quality and eject a into the end of the preceding syllable, when open; also into the beginning of the following syllable when it is stressed, open, and front ( or ): *cugitāre > > > >> OF ''cuidier'' "to think". mansiōnātam > > > > OF ''maisniée'' "household".
*** and (including those from later sources, see below) eject a following normally but do not eject any preceding .
***Double < and from various other combinations also ejects a preceding .
***Single ejects such a , but not double , evidently since it is a double sound and causes the previous syllable to close; see comment above, under lenition.
***Actual palatal and (as opposed to the merely palatalized varieties of the other sounds) retain their palatal nature and don't emit preceding . Or rather, palatal does not eject a preceding (otherwise, it is always absorbed even if depalatalized); palatal emits a preceding when depalatalized even if the preceding syllable is closed ( > * > > ''joint'').
***Palatal ejects a preceding as normal, but the metathesizes when a precedes, hence operārium > > (not ) >> ''ouvrier'' "worker".
***Palatalized labials internal (in the middle of words) become palatal affricates ( and > ; and > ; > ) without emitting a preceding . This development was also seen in Occitan and Ligurian.
*Second diphthongation: diphthongation of , , to , , in stressed, open syllables, not followed by a palatal sound (not in all Gallo-Romance). (Later on, > , > , > ; see below.)
*Second unstressed vowel loss: Loss of all vowels in unstressed, final syllables, except ; addition of a final, supporting when necessary, to avoid words with impermissible final clusters.
*Second lenition: Same changes as in first lenition, applied again (not in all Gallo-Romance). Losses of unstressed vowels may have blocked that change from happening.
*Palatalization of > , > .
*Further vocalic changes (part 1):
** > (but > after a palatal, and > before nasals when not after a palatal).
** > .
*Further consonant changes:
**Geminate stops become single stops.
**Final stops and fricatives become devoiced.
** > unless final.
**A is inserted between palatal , and following (dolēs > ''duels'' "you hurt" but colligis > * > ''cuelz, cueuz'' "you gather"; iungis > * > ''joinz'' "you join"; fīlius > ''filz'' "son": the ''z'' on such words represents ).
**Palatal , are depalatalized to , when final or following a consonant.
***In first-person verb forms, they may remain palatal when final because of the influence of the palatalized subjunctives.
*** > when depalatalising but > , without a yod. (*veclum > > > ''viel'' "old" but cuneum > > ''coin'', balneum > > ''bain'' but montāneam > > ''montagne''.)
*Further vocalic changes (part 2):
** > , > . (placēre > > ''plaisir''; noctem > > ''nuit''.)
**Diphthongs are consistently rendered as falling diphthongs, the major stress is on the ''first'' element, including for , , , etc. in contrast with the normal Spanish pronunciation.
** > , when word-final.

To Old French, c. 1100

*, , lost before final , . (dēbet > Strasbourg Oaths ''dift'' > OF ''doit''.)
* > (blocked by nasalization; see below).
* > , however this is blocked if a labial consonant follows, in which case the segment remains , ultimately becoming later. (lupa > OF ''louve''.)
* > (blocked by nasalization; see below).
* develops allophone before , which later develops into a separate phoneme.
*Loss of and . When it results in a hiatus of with a following vowel, the becomes a schwa .
*Loss of before voiced consonant (passing first through ), with lengthening of preceding vowel. That produces a new set of long vowel phonemes, as is described more completely in the following section.
* > . (This shift, along with the later > , is an areal feature common to most Gallo-Romance languages.)
*Word-final , > (diurnum > EOF ''jorn'' > OF ''jor''; vermem > EOF ''verm'' > OF ''ver''; dormit > OF ''dort'').

To Late Old French, c. 1250–1300

Changes here affect oral and nasal vowels alike, unless otherwise indicated.

To Middle French, c. 1500

Changes here affect oral and nasal vowels alike, unless otherwise indicated.

*''au'' > .
*''ei'' > (the diphthong is maintained in Quebec French: ''neige'' "snow" or ).
*Loss of final consonants before a word beginning with a consonant. That produces a three-way pronunciation for many words (alone, followed by a vowel, followed by a consonant), which is still maintained in the words ''six'' "six" and ''dix'' "ten" (and until recently ''neuf'' "nine"), e.g. ''dix'' "ten" but ''dix amis'' "ten friends" and ''dix femmes'' "ten women".
*Subject pronouns start to become mandatory because of loss of phonetic differences between inflections.
*Medieval apical s, as in ''saint'', merges into deaffricated c as in ''ceint'', thus merging soft c and s.

To Early Modern French, c. 1700

*Loss of most phonemically lengthened vowels (preserved in Belgian, Acadian French and Quebec French).
*Loss of final consonants in a word standing alone. That produces a two-way pronunciation for many words (in close connection with a following word that begins with a vowel), often still maintained: ''nous voyons'' "we see" vs. ''nous avons'' "we have". That phenomenon is known as liaison.
*''oi'' > (see above – To Late Old French) or (''étoit'' > ''était''; note that the spelling was not changed until the 19th century). This also affects certain other instances of ; e.g. ''moelle'' , ''poêle'' .
**The pronunciation is preserved in some forms of Quebec and Acadian French, especially by old speakers.
*Instances of /h/ were again deleted in the late seventeenth century. The phoneme /h/ had been reintroduced to the language through the absorption of loanwords, primarily of Germanic origin, in which the /h/ was preserved, and these are the /h/ instances that were lost this time around. However a Germanic h usually disallows liaison: les halles /le.al(ə)/, les haies /le.ɛ/, les haltes /le.alt(ə)/, whereas a Latin h allows liaison: les herbes /lezɛrb(ə)/, les hôtels /lezotɛl/.

To Modern French, c. 2000

* becomes a uvular sound: trill or fricative (the alveolar trill is maintained in Acadia, Louisiana, some parts of Québec and in Francophone Africa).
*Merger of (spelled ''il'' in ''œil'' and ''travail'') with in the 18th century (see Mouillé)
*Occasional elision of final and elsewhere unless a sequence of three consonants would be produced (such constraints operate over multiword sequences of words that are syntactically connected). Occitan French tends to be more conservative, while the elision of final does not occur in Francophone Africa.
*Changing use of liaison, which overall becomes rarer.
*In Metropolitan French, gradual merging of and , both are realized as , but the distinction is maintained in Southern France, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
*In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme , merged with , both are realized as , but the distinction is maintained in French Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
*In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme , merged with , both are realized as , but the distinction is maintained in Quebec French.
*In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme , merged with , both are realized as , but the distinction is maintained in Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa
*In Metropolitan French, merger of into when word-final, but the distinction is maintained in Belgian French.

Nasalization

Progressive nasalization of vowels before or occurred over several hundred years, beginning with the low vowels, possibly as early as 900, and finished with the high vowels, possibly as late as c. 1300. Numerous changes occurred afterwards that are still continuing.

The following steps occurred during the Old French period:

*Nasalization of , , before or (originally, in all circumstances, including when a vowel followed).
*Nasalization occurs before and blocks the changes > and > . However, the sequence occurs because has more than one origin: ''coin'' "corner" < . The sequences or , and or , also occur, but the last two occur in only one word each, in each case alternating with a non-diphthongized variant: ''om'' or ''uem'' (ModF ''on''), and ''bon'' or ''buen'' (ModF ''bon''). The version without the diphthong apparently arose in unstressed environments and is the only one that survived.
*Lowering of and to but not in the sequences and : ''bien'', ''plein''. The realization of to probably occurred during the 11th or early 12th century and did not affect Old Norman or Anglo-Norman. Ultimately merged into .
*Nasalization of , , before or .

The following steps occurred during the Middle French period:

* Lowering of > > . ( usually comes from original , as original became .)
*Denasalization of vowels before or followed by a vowel or semi-vowel. (Examples like ''femme'' "woman" < OF < and ''donne'' "(he) gives" < OF < , with lowering and lack of diphthongization before a nasal even when a vowel followed, show that nasalization originally operated in all environments.)
*Deletion of or after remaining nasal vowels (when not protected by a following vowel or semivowel): ''dent'' "tooth" < < OFr ''dent'' < EOFr < .

The following steps occurred during the Modern French period:

* > > > ( in Quebec French). That also affects diphthongs such as > > (''bien'' "well" < bene); > > , (''juin'' "June" < iūnium); > > , (''coin'' "corner" < cuneum). Also, > , (''pain'' "bread" < pānem); > , (''plein'' "full" < plēnum).
* > > , but the sound is maintained in Quebec French.
* > > ( in Quebec French)
* > ( in Quebec French). In the 20th century, this sound has low functional load and has tended to merge with .

That leaves only four nasal vowels: , , , and , the last often no longer being distinguished from the first.

See also

*Bartsch's law
* History of French#Internal history

References

Bibliography

*
* Gess, Randall (1996) ''Optimality Theory in the Historical Phonology of French''. PhD dissertation, University of Washington
*
*
*{{citation, last=Price , first=Glanville , title=French Language: Present and Past , year=1971 , publisher=Jameson Books , isbn=978-0844800356

French phonology
*
Sound laws