Word: nasality
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...French Nasal Vowels and American Nasality. Professor Grandgent...
...French Nasal Vowels and American Nasality. Professor Grandgent...
...things that strike the English speaking person of today most when studying French are the peculiar vowels, such as u, eu and mute e, and the nasal vowels an, en, in, on and un. These difficulties are not found to so great an extent in the French of the eleventh century. The u sound did exist then and seemed to offer certain difficulties to the Englishman of the day. But the eu, as in coleur, apparently did not exist. In its place, however, are found two other sounds, one something like o, and the other a dipthongal sound not unlike...
...nasal vowels there was a decided difference, but we are unable to state just the amount of it. We know that there were two nasal vowels in old French, a and e before nasal consonants. But there is this striking difference that the n is not swallowed up in the vowel, but that an and en were possibly pronounced after the English fashion...