I am reading about the French medieval 'scientist' Nicole Oresme (approx 1325-1382) and wondering how his last name was pronounced in those days. Was the 's' pronounced? And the last 'e'?
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Although no one is still here to testify I doubt the s was pronounced in the Middle Ages since it is pronounced [ɔrɛm] nowadays. In French the e at the end of words is not sounded.– NoneCommented Jan 1 at 15:33
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@None: But judging by French poetry, the /e/ at the ends of words was sounded before consonants (but not vowels) until the 16th century, and probably for quite a bit longer.– Peter ShorCommented Jan 1 at 15:39
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1@PeterShor Poetry for meter if necessary, I don't think it was all the time, but of course there are regional variations nowadays, in the South of France the e at the end of words is still sometimes sounded (I think there are questions/answers about that on FL). Oresme was from Normandy, they would not sound the e there.– NoneCommented Jan 1 at 15:43
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@None: The reason the mute e's are sounded for meter in poetry today is that they were all sounded in regular speech at some point in the past. I'm pretty sure that they were still sounded in the 16th century.– Peter ShorCommented Jan 1 at 15:45
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1@PeterShor I'm not sure about that, sounding a mute e at the end of words adds an extra syllable. French versification was/is based on meter (number of syllables) & rimes.– NoneCommented Jan 1 at 15:51
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1 Answer
You can find a phonological history of French in this Wikipedia article.
By 1100 we have this:
Loss of /s/ before voiced consonant (passing first through /h/), with lengthening of preceding vowel.
And between 1700 and 2000:
Occasional elision of final /ə/ ... Occitan French tends to be more conservative, while the elision of final /ə/ does not occur in Francophone Africa.
Elision of final /ə/ is not universal even today. (When a word is on its own, that is. If a name like Oresme precedes a word like est, then even in poetry and in dialects that usually have final /ə/, the vowel sequence can be resolved by elision. The article doesn't specify when such elision began but it would be hard to avoid given the basic difficulty of articulating and distinguishing /ə/ plus another vowel in those sequences.)
Thus, the mid-14th century, the /s/ was gone (or perhaps still clinging on as /h/, but more likely not at that point), while the final /ə/ likely remained.
Keep in mind that this is tracking an average and there was certainly regional variation. Oresme was born in Normandy, studied in Paris, and later worked in Rouen, so his accent was probably fairly aligned with the Paris-centred dialect that I believe would be taken as standard for the northern dialects. (Perhaps that means an earlier dropping of the final /ə/, but he preceded that change by 300-600 years anyway.)
There is also some discussion on the talk page of the Wikipedia article on Oresme. There someone cites a biography that lists all the known spellings of his name:
[in Latin texts] Orem, Oresmus, Oresmius, Oremius, Horen; [in French texts] Oresmius, Orème, Oresmes, d'Oresme, d'Oresmieux, Orem, Orême
I don't think we can take too much from the endings of these examples (the adaptation of the name that used to be frequent has resulted in obvious appendanges like -ius), but they certainly suggest a disappearing /s/, represented in the spelling either as remnant variations or as a memory alone. The accented è and ê seem particularly telling since those tend to indicate a lengthened vowel where a consonant has disappeared.
answered Jan 1 at 20:17
