16 century French Pronunciation

romuloVG

romuloVG

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Costa Rica
Costa Rican Spanish
I haven't found info. about 16th century French pronunciation (in contrast to much about English and Spanish) on the web.
How would I pronounce these words:

Final {s} in "puis" (yes or no)?

Final {s} in "ils" (yes or no)?

Final {t} in "mort" (yes or no)?

Final {t} in "fault" (yes or no)?

{s} in vostre (yes or no)?

{ei} in "peine"?

THANKS

It's Sermisy's song "Il me suffit"
 
    • For what I know <s> in <vostre> was not pronounced at that time, it only marked that the preceding vowel was long and closed. As for <ei> it should have been as it is today, but still nasalised in the 16th century. The question about final consonants is however more difficult because exactly around that time they were finally being dropped. I would say that "ils" was already pronounced as it is today, that is [il] in front of a consonant [ilz] in front of a vowel. For other words it's not easy to say.
     
    Last edited:
    For the final consonants, you have to give us the surrounding context. As you probably know, in French the final consonant of the same word is sometimes silent and sometimes pronounced, depending on what comes next, and this kind of contextually determined pronunciation was even more pervasive in 16th century French. I found the text of the song here.

    • mort is at the end of a line, so the final ‹t› would have been pronounced.
    • I don't see the word fault anywhere.
    • Puis-quil mont livre:
      • The pronunciation of puisque was highly variable. Some grammarians say that the ‹s› is silent (= "puîque"), some say that it must be pronounced, and still others say that both pronunciations are acceptable.
      • The pronoun ils was probably pronounced here, with a silent ‹l› (and no indication at all of ‹s/z›, if this text is accurate).

      [*]As phosphore said, the ‹s› in vostre grace was already silent (but the vowel remained short here).
      [*]The ‹ei› of peine was pronounced as a diphthong in the 16th century, but the sound of ‹i› was getting weaker and weaker.
     
    Thank you both for this valuable information. I don't have the facsimile to see the original Sermisy or Attaingnant version. This is the text as published by Diana Poulton:

    Il me suffit de tous me maux
    Puis qu'ils m'ont livré a la mort,
    J'ay enduré peine et travaulx,
    Tant de doulerus et desconfort:

    Que fault il que je face
    pour estre en vostre grace?

    De douleur mon cueur si est mort
    S'il ne voit vostre face.
     
    I've indicated the silent consonants (and elided ‹e›) in gray and the pronounced final consonants in blue. Consonants that I think could be either pronounced or not are in green.

    Il me suffit de tous mes maux
    Puis qu'ils m'ont livré a la mort,
    J'ay enduré peine et travaulx,
    Tant de douleurs et desconfort:

    Que fault il que je face
    pour estre en vostre grace?

    De douleur mon cueur si est mort
    S'il ne voit vostre face.
    Click to expand...
     
    This needs confirmation but I believe "oi" was pronounced "wè" at that time. Then later on there was a split and many words moved to "wa" still written "oi" and some others (notably the imperfect forms of verbs) to "è" written "ai". My intuition would be /fəzwè/.
     
    The /wa/ variant is attested in popular varieties already in the 13th century, but it took a while for it to become standard. I've seen some authors who analyze the modern /ɛ/~/wa/ split as dating back to a /wɛ/~/wa/ split in the late Middle Ages, with /wɛ/ but not /wa/ later losing its initial glide. This wouldn't change anything for the imperfect but potentially would for other words.

    CapnPrep said:
    I've indicated the silent consonants (and elided ‹e›) in gray and the pronounced final consonants in blue. Consonants that I think could be either pronounced or not are in green.
    Click to expand...

    I'm not sure the r of douleur(s) would have been pronounced at such a time. The /r/ of the -eur suffix was lost in the transition to Middle French and only started being restored in the 17th century

    EDIT: for "faisoient" in particular, there's the issue of the final /ə/, which was being lost at the time but also had the effect of lengthening the previous vowel and in some cause caused a yod to be present (especially for -aie), but I'm not sure how it affected the 3P imperfect suffix in particular.
     
    Swatters said:
    The /wa/ variant is attested in popular varieties already in the 13th century, but it took a while for it to become standard. I've seen some authors who analyze the modern /ɛ/~/wa/ split as dating back to a /wɛ/~/wa/ split in the late Middle Ages, with /wɛ/ but not /wa/ later losing its initial glide. This wouldn't change anything for the imperfect but potentially would for other words.



    I'm not sure the r of douleur(s) would have been pronounced at such a time. The /r/ of the -eur suffix was lost in the transition to Middle French and only started being restored in the 17th century

    EDIT: for "faisoient" in particular, there's the issue of the final /ə/, which was being lost at the time but also had the effect of lengthening the previous vowel and in some cause caused a yod to be present (especially for -aie), but I'm not sure how it affected the 3P imperfect suffix in particular.
    Click to expand...
    I was interested more in the "OI" than in the 3P ending - I just chose that as one example
    I can't see how the OI derives from Latin.
    Latin "amabam" became 16th century French "aimois/aimoys" became modern French "aimais"?
    I've read that "aimois" was pronounced "aimais". Not aimoï?
    I'm not really interested in the linguistics, just Rabelais.
     
    French generalised the -ēba- endings to every conjugation class. In what few northern Gallo-Romance preserve the -aba- endings, they evolved into the equivalent of French -ève- (so "dji mingîve" but "dji finixheu" in Liège Walloon for "je mangeais" and "je finissais"). A long ē in an open and stressed syllable becomes "oi" in French (/ei/ > /oi/ > /we/ > /wɛ/ > /ɛ/ or /wa/)

    Aimois was first pronounced /ɛmwɛ(s)/ then /ɛmɛ/, which is why the spelling was eventually changed
     
    Fuficius Fango said:
    For me it's the imperfect verbs that are the problem. How do you pronounce faisoient?
    Or is that question answered elsewhere?
    Click to expand...
    According to the dossier section of Gargantua (Folio classique, 1994 and 2007), the imperfects were pronounced [ɛ]. It was also the case in some words like foible (today faible), françois (today français).

    So, faisoit was [fəzɛ]. (More investigation would be neeeded about /ai/ : [ɛ] or [ə].
     
    It as 18 pages about the language of Rabelais (2 about the pronounciation).
     
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