Bonjour à tous!
Hurray! There are no lessons this week, so I can have a mini break before the start of the new academic year (OMG! ANOTHER LONG YEAR TO GO!!!). Anyway, I am going to work on the blog again!!!
Today's topic is quite interesting - words with un accent circonflexe (â, ê, î, ô, û). Okok, when it comes to spelling, nothing is interesting... but did you know that this accent exists for a reason (or many reasons, but I only know one...) - it has replaced the letter "s".
You know, words in any language have changed a lot over time. Some French words like "hôpital", "forêt", "île" and "pâte" were originally spelt with an "s": "hospital", "forest", "isle" and "paste". However, as the "s" sound was no longer pronounced, the letter "s" was then deleted and the accent was added to indicate a longer vowel sound.
feste => fête (holiday / party)
estre => être (be)
These are some other examples, but they don't resemble their English counterparts.
On the other hand, some accents have replaced other letters:
aage => âge
meur => mûr
seur => sûr
Maybe I am a weirdo as I think the history of language is captivating (I am weak at spelling though...). Tomorrow, I am going to start a very difficult topic - le subjonctif présent. I have been avoiding this conjugation for some time (I first learnt about it in the last oral workshop and I found it super complicated), but the teacher of the regular class started this topic last Friday, so there is no way I can ignore it anymore...
Meric et à demain!
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