Re: History of French

From: Neeraj Mathur (neeraj.mathur_at_chch.ox.ac.uk)
Date: 09/20/04 

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:39:35 +0100

"Jacques Guy" <jguy@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
news:414FA387.7605@alphalink.com.au...
>> but can we not base the
>> argument on 'consensus spellings' if you see what I mean?
>
> No, honestly, I am not sure what you mean by that.

I meant, the consensus of manuscript spellings from the period (I remember
somebody once here protesting that French didn't exist in a written form in
the Old French period and wanted to pre-empt that argument by reference to
the manuscript traditions).

>> (from Greek pneuma, where the 'pn' sequence was pronounced as
>> such, unlike English). Such words are then 'deliberately misspelt' froman
>> English perspective. Or would your argument then simply reach back
>> further,
>> to the source language?
>
> My argument??? I was not arguing anything, just that, if English were
> spelt
> logically, "ptarmigan" would be "tarmigan".

I should have written 'the argument', ie, the argument above that a word is
never deliberately misspelt upon coinage.

> One of the
> poets of the Pléïade, it think it was Du Baïf, proposed a new spelling
> for French. It was truly brilliant, intuitive, and true to the spirit of
> the language. Alas, it was never adopted. Even today, several hundred
> years later, it would be perfect.

This sounds quite intriguing - do you have a reference that I might look up
for more detail?

Neeraj Mathur

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