I mentioned in a recent blog post how the circumflex in French is frequently used to indicate the historical presence of the letter s in a word where it was lost, and I just wanted to elaborate on that. Right around the time of the Norman Conquest, the s sound began to disappear before consonants in the middle of words, which caused the vowels before them to lengthen. People needed some way to notate this change, so the circumflex was introduced by the Académie Française in 1740. Here are some instances of this:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history.
Archives
December 2023
TAGS |