Phonological history of French

• The loss of almost all final consonants.
• The occasional elision of final, 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 in the pronunciation of vowels, especially nasal vowels.

Overview

• The sound of Latin short e, turning to in Proto-Romance, became in Old French: Latin mel, "honey" > OF miel
• The sound of Latin short o > Proto-Romance > OF, later : cor > cuor > cuer, "heart"
• Latin long ē and short i > Proto-Romance > OF ei: habēre > aveir, "to have"; this later becomes in many words, as in avoir
• Latin long ō and short u > Proto-Romance > OF ou, later eu: flōrem > flour > fleur, "flower"
• Latin a, ā > Proto-Romance > OF, probably through an intervening stage of ; mare > mer, "sea". That change also characterizes the Gallo-Italic languages of Northern Italy.

Table of vowel outcomes

• "Open" syllables, where most of the vowels were diphthongized or otherwise modified.
• Syllables followed by a palatal consonant. An usually appeared before the palatal consonant, producing a diphthong, which subsequently evolved in complex ways. There were various palatal sources: Classical Latin ; any consonant followed by a coming from Latin short or in hiatus ; or followed by or ; or followed by and preceded by, or ; or after a vowel in various sequences, such as .
• Syllables preceded by a palatal consonant. An appeared after the palatal consonant, producing a rising diphthong. The palatal consonant could arise in any of the ways just described. In addition, it could stem from an earlier brought into contact with a following consonant by loss of the intervening vowel: e.g. medietātem > Proto-Romance > Gallo-Romance > Proto-French > Old French > moitié "half".
• Nasal syllables, where nasal vowels arose. Nasal syllables inhibited many of the changes that otherwise happened in open syllables; instead, vowels tended to be raised. Subsequently, the following or was deleted unless a vowel followed, and the nasal vowels were lowered; but when the or remained, the nasal quality was lost, with no lowering of the vowel. This produced significant alternations, such as masculine fin vs. feminine fine.
• Syllables closed by followed by another consonant. By Old French times, this was "debuccalized" into, which was subsequently lost, with a phonemic long vowel taking its place. These long vowels remained for centuries, and continued to be indicated by an, and later a circumflex, with alternations such as bette "chard" vs. bête "beast". Sometimes the length difference was accompanied by a difference in vowel quality, e.g. mal "bad" vs. mâle "male". Phonemic length disappeared from Parisian French by the 18th century, but survived regionally.
• Syllables closed by followed by another consonant. The vocalized to, producing a diphthong, which then developed in various ways.
• Syllables where two or more of the above conditions occurred simultaneously, which generally evolved in complex ways. Common examples are syllables followed by both a nasal and a palatal element ; open syllables preceded by a palatal ; syllables both preceded and followed by a palatal ; syllables preceded by a palatal and followed by a nasal.

• An "open" context is a stressed syllable followed by at most a single consonant at the Vulgar Latin stage.
• A "closed" context is any other syllable type.
• A "late closed" context is a context that is open at the Vulgar Latin stage but becomes closed in the Gallo-Romance stage due to loss an unstressed vowel.
• A "palatal" context is a stressed syllable where the preceding consonant has a palatal quality, causing a yod to be generated after the preceding consonant, before the stressed vowel.

1. medietātem

Chronological history

To Proto-Romance

• Loss of.
• Loss of final .
• >. The preceding vowel was long as a result of compensatory lengthening.
• > in some words but not others.
• Fusion of the diphthongs and to and respectively. The diphthong was retained.
• Development of Latin and intervocalic to a voiced labial fricative. The original phonetic realization of this sound was probably bilabial, but it eventually became labiodental in French, and so will be transcribed below.
• Introduction of prosthetic short before words beginning with + consonant, which would later become closed with the Italo-Western vowel change.
• Vulgar Latin unstressed vowel loss: Loss of intertonic vowels between, and,.
• Final >, > .
• Reduction of and in hiatus to, which would eventually be followed by palatalization of the resulting consonant + sequences.
• Affrication of .
• Gemination of to.

To Proto-Italo-Western Romance

• Reduction of ten-vowel system to the seven vowels . In unstressed syllables, become, resulting in only five distinct unstressed vowels.
• Palatalization of, before the front vowels . For simplicity, the outcomes can be transcribed as, ; the steps involved in their subsequent phonetic development are debated.

To Proto-Gallo-Ibero-Romance

• Further changes involving palatalized sounds:
• * and merge as an affricate . The double version of this affricate,, is the regular outcome of, from earlier, from unstressed Latin or + vowel.
• *,,, have all merged as by this point.
• * and become.
• * and become. The intermediate steps are disputed.
• * > and > ; first going through and, respectively.
• First lenition : chain shift involving intervocalic singleton consonants. Voiced stops and unvoiced fricatives become voiced fricatives, while unvoiced stops become voiced stops. Specifically, intervocalic > ; intervocalic >, and intervocalic >. The dating is debated; it is sometimes placed as early as the 3rd century AD, but was probably not completed until later; it seems to have been complete in Gaul by the end of the sixth century. Consonants before are lenited, also, and >. Final and are lenited when preceded by a vowel.
• **malefatius > Early Old French.
• First unstressed vowel loss: Loss of intertonic vowels except when pretonic. That occurred at the same time as the first lenition, and individual words inconsistently show one change before the other. Hence manica > manche but grānica > grange. carricāre becomes either charchier or chargier in Old French. However, in some analyses, the standard for central French was initially for lenition to occur before the unstressed vowel loss, and patterns of the order being reversed, resulting in voiceless consonants, were loaned from the more Frankish-influenced Northern dialects of Normandy, Champagne and Lorrain, eventually spreading to some other words by analogy, leading to known cases of divergent development, such as grange and granche, and venger and vencher.
• Vowels and are raised to and, when preceding a syllable containing or : illī > il, mōvī > mui, dēbuī > > dui . The traces of this process were later deleted in the nominative plurals, due to analogy.

To Early Old French (c. 840)

• Diphthongization of open-mid vowels in stressed open syllables, and also in stressed closed syllables if followed by a palatal sound. They remain unchanged in other kinds of closed syllables, hence semper > sempre and morta > morte . Unstressed did not exist, having merged with. The diphthongs resulting from this sound change are variously transcribed by modern linguists as or. Old French assonances and rhymes suggest that diphthongization initially produces falling diphthongs such as or, with later evolving into a rising diphthong and later evolving into a front rounded vowel . However, Porter 1960 reconstructs the rising diphthongs as occurring already in Eulalia.
• * In stressed open syllables: Latin bona, caelum > Early Old French buona, ciel
• * Followed by a palatal in stressed closed syllables: peior >> > >> pire "worst"; noctem > > >> nuit; but tertium > >> tierz.
• *Diphthongization in the contexts described above predates the earliest Old French texts, but the exact date of this sound change for northern Gallo-Romance languages is uncertain. Although diphthongization of is a widespread sound change in Romance languages the conditions in which it occurs are not uniform between languages: for example, diphthongize in both closed and open stressed syllables in Romanian and Spanish, and nowhere in Portuguese. Some linguists date diphthongization to the 6th or 7th century, while others argue it occurred as early as the 3rd or 4th century; argues the early dating has not been established. Diphthongization affects the vowels in some loanwords from Germanic, such as Germanic *medu > Old French mied, mies "mead".
• Second lenition of intervocalic voiced stops :
• *Between vowels, singleton become. As before, intervocalic are also affected: patrem, capra, sacrāmentum > > EOF > French père, chèvre, serment. Cf. soure 'over'. The labialized velar becomes after stressed front vowels, as in sequit > * > siut, or with metathesis, suit. This can be strengthened to when followed by a vowel or by, as in sequere > * > sivre~siure. Northern and eastern dialects show rather than in this context, hence sequere, sequit > seure~sieure, seut~sieut.
• *This lenition does not affect that had come into contact with a preceding consonant via intertonic vowel loss, even in cases where that preceding consonant eventually becomes lost or vocalized, as in adcubitāre > French accouder, *subitānum > French soudain, *placitāre > French plaider, adjūtāre > French aider.
• **In contrast, the glide that develops from diphthongization of does not protect a following consonant, as seen in monēta > > > Old French moneie, monoie.
• Palatalization of velars before :
• * before become palatal affricates . Very few words fail to palatalize: cavea >> cage, not **chage.
• * before becomes a palatal glide when preceded by an unrounded vowel.
• ** also becomes a palatal glide in the suffixes -īcum and -ācum.
• and become ; and become ; becomes. This development was also seen in Occitan and Ligurian.
• When not preceded by a vowel, becomes. The ultimate source can be Late Latin,,, or word-initial :
• *diurnum > EOF jorn, Georgius > OF Georges, argentum > OF argent, iacet > OF gist.
• Where intertonic vowel loss had brought into contact with following, it palatalized them to . The preceding vowel develops to a diphthong ending in the glide. Examples:
• *impeiorāre > > > > OF empoirier "to worsen"
• *medietātem > > > > > moitié
• The glide develops between a vowel and a following palatalized consonant in some cases:
• *Before double . This will ultimately develop to, merging with original.
• **messiōnem > meisson, pisciōnem > peisson, nāscentem > naissant
• *Before single or . This will ultimately develop to .
• **mānsiōnem > maison, ratiōnem > raison, placēre > plaisir
• *Before and also before certain clusters ending in :
• **corium > cuir, ostrea > uistre
• *Before syllable-final. This will ultimately develop to : > * > > joint
• But a glide typically does not develop between a vowel and the following consonants:
• *,
• *
• **faciat > > OF face.
• *double, which develops to Old French
• *.
• Morphemic in inherited words becomes instead of, hence operārium > > >> ouvrier "worker", but ārea >> aire "area" did not participate.
• Diphthongization of and fronting of in stressed, originally open syllables. In other words, these changes affect long, which were either allophones of or distinct phonemes. There is disagreement about the relative ordering of these sound changes. Diphthongization does not affect vowels followed by a palatal glide or palatalized sound. This diphthongization has been dated to the fourth century, seventh century, or mid-eighth century; it did not occur in all Gallo-Romance.
• * becomes, as in *bellātiōrem > bellezour.
• * becomes when not preceded by a palatal sound, as in concrēdere > concreidre.
• **After a palatal or palatalized consonant, evolves instead to . Examples: cēra > OF cire, pagēnsem > OF païs, placēre > OF plaisir, iacēre > OF gesir
• *, when not followed by a nasal or preceded by a palatal sound, becomes a vowel that can be transcribed as. Its actual phonetic quality is debated: in Early Old French, it is usually written but does not assonate with either or. It evolves later in French to in a closed syllable, in an open one. A diphthong such as may have been a stage in its development, but alternatively it may have simply developed by fronting of to, resulting in a phonemic distinction between the four vowel qualities,, and. Another common interpretation supposes that evolved to or, a distinctively long vowel in contrast to short and, although this would be the only phonemic length contrast in the Early Old French vowel system.
• **Before a nasal, evolves instead to when not preceded by a palatalized consonant: manum, amat > OF main, aime
• **After a palatalized consonant, evolves instead to. This is known as Bartsch's law, and can be dated to the sixth or seventh century. Examples: *cugitāre > > > > >> OF cuidier "to think", mansiōnātam > > > > OF maisniée "household".
• Other vowel changes:
• * >. This takes place after the palatalization of velars before.
• *, from Proto-Italo-Western Romance * before a palatal glide, are simplified to .
• **lectum > * > lit, noctem > * > nuit, peior > * > pire
• **Compare the development of to when preceded by a palatal or palatalized consonant, described above.
• *Similarly, becomes when preceded by a palatal consonant: iacet > OF gist, cacat > OF chie.
• *Second unstressed vowel loss :
• **In unstressed final syllables, all vowels except are lost, unless this loss would result in an impermissible final cluster. In that case, the vowel is retained as : mortem > mort, but vincere > veintre.
• **Unstressed becomes in final syllables and in open word-medial syllables.
• Other consonant changes:
• * is reintroduced in borrowings from Germanic languages.
• *Single intervocalic is eventually deaffricated to, upon which it merges with the outcome of. There is conflicting evidence of the date of this sound change. The consonant derived from Latin before a front vowel seems to have still been a palatalized affricate or when the following vowel was lost in a final syllable, resulting in word-final in Early Old French, later simplified to. In contrast, the consonant derived from Latin + yod seems to have become a palatalized fricative by the time the following vowel was lost in a final syllable, resulting in word-final in Early Old French. In the Sequence of Saint Eulalia, the letter may represent in the words "domnizelle" and "bellezour".
• **picem > EOF peiz, nucem > EOF noiz, crucem > EOF croiz, pacem > EOF paiz, vocem > EOF voiz
• **palatium > EOF palais, pretium > EOF pris
• *Degemination of obstruents: At some point after the lenition of single intervocalic to, geminate obstruents are simplified to single consonants. This change is variously dated from the 7th-9th century. Since diphthongization of, diphthongization of and fronting of occur only in originally open syllables, some analysts assume that degemination must postdate all of these sound changes. However, it is possible that the distinction at the time of these sound changes was not in the length of the consonant, but in the length of the vowel.
• *Intervocalic is lost when followed, or sometimes when preceded by a rounded vowel:
• ***nūba > > French nue, *habūtum > > French eu, *bibūtum > > French bu
• * is lost in contexts where it did not evolve to ; namely, when either the preceding or the following vowel was rounded:
• **locāre > > French louer, rūga > French rue
• *Obstruents are devoiced when final or when followed by a voiceless obstruent, including after vowel loss.
• * is affricated to after palatal or .
• *Palatal is depalatalized to when not followed by a vowel.
• **In first-person verb forms, it may remain palatal when final because of the influence of the palatalized subjunctives.
• ** > when depalatalisinɡ
• *Palatal is depalatalized to when followed by a consonant, but not when word-final.

To Old French, c. 1100

• ,, lost before final,.
• Loss of and. When it results in a hiatus of with a following vowel, the becomes a schwa.
• Word-final, > .
• Deletion or vocalization of before consonants:
• * is simply deleted after .
• * is also deleted after rounded vowels,, and .
• * becomes after the remaining vowels.
• **However, and when affected by this process, become the sequences and, respectively.
• > .
• >, however this is blocked if a labial consonant follows, in which case the segment remains, ultimately becoming later.
• > .
• > > after labials and velars, but elsewhere.
• develops allophone before, which later develops into a separate phoneme.
• >.
• Loss of before voiced consonant, with lengthening of preceding vowel. That produces a new set of long vowel phonemes, as is described more completely in the following section.

[|To Late Old French], c. 1250–1300

To Middle French, c. 1500

• > .
• Loss of final consonants before a word beginning with a consonant. That produces a three-way pronunciation for many words, which is still maintained in the words six "six" and dix "ten", e.g. dix "ten" but dix amis "ten friends" and dix femmes "ten women".
• Subject pronouns start to become mandatory because of loss of phonetic differences between inflections.
• Medieval apical s, as in saint, merges into deaffricated as in ceint, thus merging soft and.

To Early Modern French, c. 1700

• > > in Late Middle French.
• > > in Later Middle French > .
• Loss of most phonemically lengthened vowels.
• Loss of final consonants in a word standing alone. That produces a two-way pronunciation for many words, often still maintained: nous voyons "we see" vs. nous avons "we have". That phenomenon is known as liaison.
• > or . This also affects certain other instances of ; e.g. moelle, poêle.
• * Change into is relatively rare in standard French, it occurs notably in the imperfect tense suffixes, the adjectival suffix -ois > -ais, as well as other few words, e.g. connoître > connaître.
• *The pronunciation is preserved in some forms of Quebec and Acadian French, especially by old speakers.
• Instances of were again deleted in the late seventeenth century. The phoneme had been reintroduced to the language through the absorption of loanwords, primarily of Germanic origin, and these are the instances that were lost this time around. However a Germanic usually disallows liaison: les halles, les haies, les haltes, whereas a Latin allows liaison: les herbes, les hôtels.

To Modern French, c. 2000

• becomes a uvular sound, realized as either a trill or fricative, in most accents. The alveolar trill is maintained in Acadia, Louisiana, some parts of Québec and in Francophone Africa.
• Merger of into, which had begun in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reaches completion around the beginning of the nineteenth century
• Elision of final, and occasionally of elsewhere, unless a sequence of three consonants would be produced. Occitan French tends to be more conservative, while the elision of final does not occur in Francophone Africa.
• Changing use of liaison, which overall becomes rarer.
• In Metropolitan French, gradual merging of and, both are realized as, but the distinction is maintained in Southern France, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
• In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme, merged with, both are realized as, but the distinction is maintained in French Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
• In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme, merged with, both are realized as, but the distinction is maintained in Quebec French.
• In Metropolitan French, loss of the phoneme, merged with, both are realized as, but the distinction is maintained in Northern French, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and Francophone Africa.
• In Metropolitan French, merger of into when word-final, but the distinction is maintained in Belgian French.

Loss of final consonants

• The first known consonant to be affected was and it occurred before consonants. Prior to this, and were voiced to and before words starting in a vowel.
• Final consonants outside of consonant clusters could be retained before a word starting in vowel, at pause, or in monosyllabic words.
• could vocalize or delete in word-final position, but this process is unpredictable, due to later analogy and restoration of this consonant.
• * usually does not change after low and mid vowels, except through analogy with the respective plural forms..
• * tends to be unpronounced after high vowels as of 13th century, however, most words have restored this consonant in Classical French.

Nasalization

• Nasalization of,, before or .
• Nasalization occurs before and blocks the changes > and >. However, the sequence occurs because has more than one origin: coin "corner" <. The sequences or, and or, also occur, but the last two occur in only a few words, in each case alternating with a non-diphthongized variant: om or uem, and bon or buen. The version without the diphthong apparently arose in unstressed environments and is the only one that survived.
• Lowering of and to but not in the sequences and : bien, plein. The realization of to probably occurred during the 11th or early 12th century and did not affect Old Norman or Anglo-Norman. Ultimately merged into.
• Nasalization of,, before or.
• It is not clear if the third-person plural ending -ent contained a nasalized schwa ; although the n is consistently kept in writing, by Early Modern French at the latest it had become non-nasal.

• Lowering of > >.
• Denasalization of vowels before or followed by a vowel or semi-vowel.
• Deletion of or after remaining nasal vowels : dent "tooth" < < OFr dent < EOFr <.

• > > > . That also affects diphthongs such as > > ; > >, ; > >,. Also, >, ; >,.
• > >, but the sound is maintained in Quebec French.
• >
• > . In the 20th century, this sound has low functional load and has tended to merge with.