of i (= y-consonant) following the consonant ending an accented
syllable begins in the 12th century—Early Old French glorie
(glōriam), estudie (studium), olie (oleum); Modern French gloire,
étude, huile. English sometimes shows the earlier form—glory, study;
sometimes the later—dower (douaire, Early Old French doarie,
dōtārium), oil (huile). (14) The vocalization of l preceded by a vowel
and followed by a consonant becomes frequent at the end of the 12th
century; when preceded by open è, an a developed before the l
while this was a consonant—11th century salse (salsa), beltet (bellitatem), solder (solidāre); Modern French sauce, beauté, souder. In
Parisian, final èl followed the fate of èl before a consonant, becoming
the triphthong èau, but in Norman the vocalization did not take
place, and the l was afterwards rejected—Modern French ruisseau,
Modern Guernsey russé (rīvicellum). English words of French origin
sometimes show l before a consonant, but the general form is u—scald (échauder, excalidāre), Walter (Gautier, Teutonic Waldhari);
sauce, beauty, soder. Final èl is kept—veal (veau, vitellum), seal
(sceau, sigillum). (15) In the east and centre éi changes to òi, while
the older sound is retained in the north-west and west—Norman
estreit (étroit, strictum), preie (proie, praedam), 12th century Picard,
Parisian, &c., estroit, proie. But the earliest (10th century) specimens
of the latter group of dialects have éi—pleier (ployer, plicāre) Eulalia,
mettreiet (mettrait, mittere habēbat) Jonah. Parisian òi, whether from
ei or from Old French òi, ói, became in the 15th century uè (spellings
with oue or oe are not uncommon—mirouer for miroir, mīrātōrium),
and in the following, in certain words, è, now written ai—français,
connaître, from françois (franceis, franciscum), conoistre (conuistre,
cognōscere); where it did not undergo the latter change it is now ua
or wa—roi (rei, rēgem), croix (cruis, crūcem). Before nasals and
palatal l, ei (now = è) was kept—veine (vēna), veille (vigilā), and it
everywhere survives unlabialized in Modern Norman—Guernsey
ételle (étoile, stēlla) with é, ser (soir, sērum) with è. English shows
generally ei (or ai) for original ei—strait (estreit), prey (preie); but
in several words the later Parisian oi—coy (coi, qviētum), loyal (loyal,
lēgālem). (16) The splitting of the vowel-sound from accented
Latin ō or u not in position, represented in Old French by o and u
indifferently, into u, o (before nasals), and eu (the latter at first a
diphthong, now = German ö), is unknown to Western French till
the 12th century, and is not general in the east. The sound in 11th
century Norman was much nearer to u (Modern French ou) than to ó
(Modern French ô), as the words borrowed by English show uu (at
first written u, afterwards ou or ow), never óó; but was probably
not quite u, as Modern Norman shows the same splitting of the
sound as Parisian. Examples are—Early Old French espose or
espuse (spōnsam), nom or num (nōmen), flor or flur (flōrem); Modern
French épouse, nom, fleur; Modern Guernsey goule (gueule, gulam),
nom, flleur. Modern Picard also shows u, which is the regular sound
before r—flour; but Modern Burgundian often keeps the original
Old French ó—vo (vous, vōs). English shows almost always uu—spouse, noun, flower (Early Middle English spuse, nun, flur); but
nephew with éu (neveu, nepōtem). (17) The loss of the u (or w) of qu
dates from the end of the 12th century—Old French quart (qvartum),
quitier (qviētāre) with qu = kw, Modern French quart, quitter with qu =
k. In Walloon the w is preserved—couâr (quart), cuitter; as is
the case in English—quart, quit. The w of gw seems to have been
lost rather earlier, English having simple g—gage (gage, older guage,
Teutonic wadi), guise (guise, Teutonic wīsa). (18) The change of
the diphthong òu to uu did not take place till after the 12th century,
such words as Anjou (Andegāvum) assonating in the Roland on
fort (fortem); and did not occur in Picardy, where òu became au
caus from older còus, còls (cous, collōs) coinciding with caus from
calz (chauds, calidōs). English keeps òu distinct from uu—vault for
vaut (Modern French voûte, volvitam), soder (souder, solidāre). (19)
The change of the diphthong ié to simple é 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 fiers, ferus), chief
(chief, caput), with ie = ee; but pannier (panier, panārium). At the
beginning of the modern period, Parisian dropped the i of ie when
preceded by ch or j—chef, abréger (Old French abregier, abbreviāre);
elsewhere (except in verbs) ie is retained—fier (ferum), pitié (pietātem).
Modern Guernsey retains ie after ch—ap’rchier (approcher, adpropeāre).
(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 ó, its present
sound, rendering, for instance, maux (Old French mals, malōs)
identical with mots (muttōs). The au of eau underwent the same
change, but its e was still sounded as ǝ (the e of que); in the next
century this was dropped, making veaux (Old French vëels, vitellōs)
identical with vaux (vals, vallēs). (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 pronounced 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
consonants 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 fòr
(though still written fort) before a consonant, fòrt 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 e) of unaccented final syllables; this vowel preserved
in the 16th century the sound ǝ, which it had in Early Old French.
In later Anglo-Norman final ǝ (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 ǝ is confined to a few words and forms;
the 10th century saveiet (sapēbat for sapiēbat) became in the 11th
saveit, and ore (ad hōram), ele (illam) develop the abbreviated or, el.
In the 15th century ǝ before a vowel generally disappears—mûr, Old
French mëur (mātūrum); and in the 16th, though still written, ǝ
after an unaccented vowel, and in the syllable ent after a vowel,
does the same—vraiment, Old French vraiement (vērācā mente);
avoient two syllables, as now (avaient), in Old French three syllables
(as habēbant). These phenomena occur much earlier in the anglicized
French of England—13th century aveynt (Old French aveient). 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 as fòrt and fòrtǝ,
remain distinguished, but as fòr and fòrt. The metre of poetry is
still constructed on the obsolete pronunciation, which is even revived
in singing; “dîtes, la jeune belle,” actually four syllables (dit,
la zhœn bèl), is considered as seven, fitted with music accordingly,
and sung to fit the music (ditǝ, la zhœnǝ bèlǝ). (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 latrō, amās, giving lére,
áime, and in latrōnem, amātis, giving larón, améz, 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 e
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
cau, in occasion it is ca. Poetry is still written according to the
original place of the stress; the rhyme-syllables of larron, aimez
are still ron and mez, which when set to music receive an accented
(strong) note, and are sung accordingly, though in speech the la
and ai generally have the principal stress. In reading poetry, as
distinguished from singing, the modern pronunciation is used, both
as to the loss of the final ǝ and the displacement of the stress, the
result being that the theoretical metre in which the poetry is
written disappears. (24) In certain cases accented vowels were
lengthened in Old French, as before a lost s; this was indicated in
the 16th century by a circumflex—bête, Old French beste (bestiam),
âme, Old French anme (anima). The same occurred in the plural of
many nouns, where a consonant was lost before the s of the flection;
thus singular coc with short vowel, plural cos with long. The plural
cos, though spelt cogs instead of cô (= kóó), is still sometimes to be
heard, but, like other similar ones, is generally refashioned after
the singular, becoming kòk. In present French, except where a
difference of quality has resulted, as in côte (Old French coste, costam)
with ò and cotte (Old French cote), with ò, short and long vowels
generally run together, quantity being now variable and uncertain;
but at the beginning of this century the Early Modern distinctions appear to have been generally preserved.
(d) Orthography.—The history of French spelling is based on that of French sounds; as already stated, the former (apart from a few Latinisms in the earliest documents) for several centuries faithfully followed the latter. When the popular Latin of Gaul was first written, its sounds were represented by the letters of the Roman alphabet; but these were employed, not in the values they had in the time of Caesar, but in those they had acquired in consequence of the phonetic changes that had meantime taken place. Thus, as the Latin sound u had become ó (close o) and ū had become y (French u, German ü), the letter u was used sometimes to denote the sound ó, sometimes the sound y; as Latin k (written c) had become tsh or ts, according to dialect, before e and i, c was used to represent those sounds as well as that of k. The chief features of early French orthography (apart from the specialities of individual MSS., especially the earliest) are therefore these:—c stood for k and tsh or ts; d for d
