Phonological history of French

Common card · No. 329349

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, Romanian, Catalan, and Occitan 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 /ə/, 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...

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