Emile comments on Being a teacher - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Swimmer963 14 March 2011 08:03PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (152)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Emile 14 March 2011 10:08:42PM *  7 points [-]

Oh, that, yes - I ascribe that more to the fact that written French just has a lot of letters you don't pronounce, or only pronounce in certain contexts, especially at the end of words (or h at the beginning).

But those letters still exist, even in spoken french: the verbs in "tu vois" and "il voit" sound the same ("vwa") in isolation, but with "arriver" behind them, they can sound like "tu vwazarriver" and "il vwatarriver".

Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2011 11:45:46PM 1 point [-]

Not to mention the fact that only some of the forms are homophones anyway: parle/parles/parlent sound the same, but they're different from parlons and parlez.

Comment author: prase 15 March 2011 02:24:53PM 0 points [-]

Is there some context where you can distinguish ait from aient in the spoken language?

Comment author: Emile 15 March 2011 02:47:37PM 0 points [-]

Probably not, even the vois/voit example is far-fetched, most people would pronounce both "vwa'arriver", except maybe in a context where they want to put extra emphasis.