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Archiver > QUEBEC-RESEARCH > 2002-07 > 1026039519


From: Suzanne B Sommerville <>
Subject: Re: [Q-R] 8 denotes Indian?
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 06:58:39 -0400


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>Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2002 17:03:03 -0400
From: Denis Beauregard <>
To:
Message-ID: <>
Subject: Re: [Q-R] 8 denotes Indian?

<snip>
The problem with this explanation is the sound OU already existed
in French. Think to words like BOULE, COULEUR, DOUCEUR, FOULURE,
GOURDE, HOULE, etc. The sound OU is very common. My feeling is
the sound 8 was something else, maybe a sound not existing in
French.

>When the English settlers first heard the languages spoken by the People
who
>were here before them, they had no trouble recognizing the phoneme, which
was
>identical to the one in the English words "water" and "wish", so they
>transcribed this sound as [w].

And why not directly the OU that existed in French ?

I understand everybody gives the same explanation (a missing OU
sound in French), but I just can't buy that explanation...


Denis<<<<<<<<<

Of course it is not the _same_ sound, Denis. I have read that it was more
guttural, formed farther back in the throat than any French "ou" or English
"w". Some even suggest that it is close to the stereotype "ugh" of the
old movies, but even that is not precise.

It's a sound that didn't exist in French. That's why the Jesuits, who
were, after all, educated linguists, chose a Greek epsilon combined with a
Greek omega to represent it.

Only the international phonetic alphabet would come close to reproducing
the sound. If you don't know what this is, look in a good dictionary.

As for pronouncing it "wheat", that's a bad guess based on the use of the
number 8 for the type set of the original symbol "u" over an "o". The
original registers I have seen, especially of Trois-RIvières, show this
"u" over an "o" is how the sound was represented, although later priests
modified it to 8. The sound has nothing to do with the sound of "huit".
Suzanne

Suzanne Boivin Sommerville
Michigan, USA

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