Sound Correspondences III

The letter "e" in French

The first two Sound Correspondences lessons gave you a way of connecting words from Spanish, French and Italian. This lesson focuses on a place where connections break down, and why. It's a bit harder than the first two, but should help you deal with some of the French words and forms that would otherwise seem completely unlike those of Spanish and Italian.

French is a language that is mumbled. That's not a compliment, not an insult. Just a fact. We do the same thing in English, as a matter of fact, pronouncing most unstressed vowels "uh". The French were doing this well before they started writing the language down. When they did start to write it, they designated the letter "e" to stand for that "uh" sound when it had no accent. This leads to a contrast between French and its relatives Spanish and Italian:

Spanish and Italian tend to preserve the vowels from Latin or alter them in somewhat predictable ways.

French tends to replace vowels from Latin with the letter "e" if the vowels were in a weak, or unstressed, position.

The number one unstressed position where French differs from It. and Sp. is word endings. In early Romance (not exactly, but work with me here) most nouns and adjectives ended in "o," "a," or "e." Nouns from a first category were feminine and ended in "a." Nouns from a second category were masculine and ended in "o." Nouns from a third category could be masculine or feminine and ended in "e." Adjectives stuck to this: group one ended in "a" for feminine and "o" for masculine. group two ended in "e" regardless. In Spanish and Italian, those endings are still there. But in French, they were mumbled and so all became "uh," written "e." The same thing happened with the most common verbs, those ending in "-are" in Latin. They end in -are in Italian and -ar in Spanish. In French, they end in -er, and most of the conjugated forms end in "uh," spelled "e" (though "silent" consonants may follow). So the word for "speak" in I speak, you speak, he speaks, they speak sounds the same, for the most part. Only "we speak" and "you (guys) speak" differ in pronunciation.

What good does this knowledge do us? By knowing that the French have mumbled a lot of vowels into being "uh," written "e," we know not to make too much of a letter "e" in French. If you think a word looks familiar but aren't sure why, from now on, you can try changing "e"s - especially at the end of words - into "a," then "o," in search of corresponding Italian and Spanish words. And you can try pronouncing French words out loud, if they look completely unlike Spanish or Italian, and see if they sound like a mumbled version of the Spanish or Italian word, in which case you've made your connection.

Incidentally, this article only addresses why the letter "e" is written in certain places in French. In the future, we'll talk about when to pronounce it and when you can mumble right past it.