Re: Middle French plural sought

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Mar 12 2006 - 02:27:12 CST

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    From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
    > In Bewnans Ke, a Middle Cornish play, characters sometimes speak bits
    > of Middle English, Middle French, and Latin. Arthur addresses a group
    > of his knights who come to visit him. He says:
    >
    > Byanvenu, moun beal amors!

    Is that really a French orthograph? I think it looks more like a pseudo-phonetic transcription mixing an exagerated French accent with some other foreign accent (italian probably), as it would be written by english speakers trying to denote this as a parody.

    And may be the final s in amors is also just a comic effect to reflect the lack of education of a related character in some litterary creation...

    I have never seen such phonetic transformations between Middle or Old French and modern French ; at least not in classical texts, and not even from authors that used regional variants still influenced by southern dialects (Old Occitan/Provençal or Auvergnat), or by northern dialects (Berrichon, Angevin, Picard, Gallo...)

    But if you speak about Arthur's theme, may be it is a remnant of Old Normand (I don't know anything about this medieval language, which only remains today within Channel Islands, in Jersey, and is still spoken by very few aging people, but with lot of influences from English.)

    Your sentence looks very strange for me. Where does it come from?



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