Talk:Liaison (French)

message: See Talk:Liaison/Translation_from_French. If you can help translate from French, please do. :-) Ruakh 19:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just finished. I still think it's very French specific (and verbose!) to put it all in Liaison; I'd rather make a special Liaison in French article, and leave only the generalities over here. --Pablo D. Flores 12:09, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But isn't liaison specifically describing the phenomenon in French? I mean, it is a French word. The general term for it might be sandhi, which could use a little reference to its application in French. --Euniana/Talk/Blog 15:24, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, tsunami is a Japanese word. :-( The way I understand it, it's a phenomenon that happens in many languages, but among Western European languages (the most studied, in other times) French is the only one that features it prominently, and so French got to name it. Sandhi is a more general concept I think, and mostly refers to modification of features by other features (not only phonemes, also tonemes). I mentioned to Ruakh that in Rioplatense Spanish syllable final -s tends to become [h] or disappear, but in some areas it reappears when the next word begins with a vowel -- much as in French liaison. So the phenomenon is not exclusive of French. --Pablo D. Flores 03:04, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: If I take an article from, say, the French Wikipedia, and translate it to English, then how do I add that to the English Wikipedia? I mean, the GFDL requires that I indicate in some way that it's a translation of the French article, since a translation is a derivative work and people contributing to the French article did so under the GFDL. How do I indicate that? How does the indicator change once the work is no longer a simple translation, but has undergone further editing here? Ruakh 18:47, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Would it suffice to add a comment to the Talk page, directing the reader to fr? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:27, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Cool. Thanks, all. :-) Ruakh 01:02, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translations + GFDL? 

message: * Talk:Liaison — Liaison → Liaison (linguistics) – Too specific on one definition of liaison, but translated from a FA on fr.wiki McNeight 22:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
*Support - Excellent page, but there is no reference to English uses such as a military liaison or as a synonym for affair. McNeight 22:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: :Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
*Support - Excellent page, but there is no reference to English uses such as a military liaison or as a synonym for affair. McNeight 22:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Voting

message: The article says "Bearing in mind that stress in French falls on the last syllable of a word, or a group of words when they are bound grammatically,...". I strongly disagree with this statement being native French speaker myself. The French language does not stress any part of a word over another unless a special effect is desired (ex: SEULement ) and in which case it could be anywhere in the word. Where did the wikipedian who wrote that got his/her references from?
209.202.82.139 18:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's well established that in French the accent (l'accent tonique) always falls on the last full syllable of a word or group of words (d'un mot phonétique). Now, accent not being quite the same as stress, there is a minor fix to be made (viz, replace the word stress with accent), but you seem to be objecting to more than that? —RuakhTALK 23:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the debate was PAGE MOVED per discussion below. -GTBacchus(talk) 09:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  stress in French 

message: Add  * Support  or  * Oppose  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.
*Oppose. I think the real problem is that most of the information here is more appropriate to Wikibooks than to Wikipedia. Do we really need to give all the contexts in which liaison is obligatory, optional, or forbidden? We can shorten the French section significantly, and add other languages within the same article. Ruakh 17:24, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: Regarding the recent revert war: I'd like to cast my vote for spelling Latin using normal modern conventions — Romance-style capitalization (most words all-lowercase, some words starting with a capital letter for any of various reasons), distinguishing u and v but not i and j, marking long vowels with macrons and leaving short vowels unmarked. —RuakhTALK 18:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalizing Latin. 

message: 1 "In French, most written word-final consonants are silent in most contexts. Liaison is the pronunciation of such a consonant immediately before a following vowel sound. For example, the letter s in the word les ("the") is generally silent, but it is pronounced /z/ in the combination les amis ("the friends"). In certain syntactic contexts, liaison is impossible; in others, it is obligatory; and in yet others, it is possible but not obligatory"
this is a very naive definition, based on the "letter concept" of the vovels and consonants, the rest of the article is more scientific, so it should be stressed here that it is rather the vulgar definition
2 Like elision (as in *je aime → j'aime), it can be characterized functionally as a euphonic strategy for avoiding hiatus. If we look at it like this, we are adopting a synchronic approach. This approach does not explain cases where the first word already ends in a consonant, such as telsamis, and is therefore already perfectly euphonic.
very good, and does not explain why hiatus is not avoided in cases like "le plus laid | en france" (compare with lesenfants)
3 The (usually) silent final consonants of certain words can be pronounced, in certain syntactic contexts, when the following word begins with a vowel. Since the sound thus obtained is an ancient one, spellings that are based on the etymology of the word may not reflect the real pronunciation.
I should specify : "final written consonants" and we are again in the vulgar explanation, based on letters, it would be smarter to refer to latent consonants
4 Littré. A liaison consonant should not be pronounced immediately after [ʁ]. Plural [z] is recognized as an exception to this rule, and various other counterexamples can be observed: parsavec lui, fortagréable, versune solution. 
those examples are not good !
in fort agréable, the liaison with the t is probably an hypercorrectism as you can link with the r but you can say, it's true "for ta gréable"
the two other examples simply are out of date : nobody today could say "par za vec lui" or "ver zun solusion" even in poetry or theatre so I think your counter examples are wrong and Littré is still good !
5  [taːtɑ̃dy].) this phonetic transcription is not good, the tilde should be on top of the a instead of the d, but this a smal problem. the great problem is that the [aː] does not retranscript the prononciation of this phonemes : a long a is not prononced here but rather a long a with two peaks of intensity !
6 Careful pronunciation (but without the obligatory reading of “null e’s”) is necessary in a formal setting.
yes, it is what I call diction (see the diction page in french)
The voice is a tool of persuasion: it reflects, through a pronunciation perceived as correct (according to prevailing norms), intellectual qualities, culture, self-control, and wit. Pushed too far, the over-proliferation of liaisons can render a speech ridiculous.
or prononciation of all the null e's,  yes it's true (and that why the "midi" accent still is laughed at in french...
It has been pointed out that French politicians and speakers (Jacques Chirac, for example) pronounce some liaison consonants, independently of the following word, introducing a pause or a schwa afterwards. For example, ils ont entendu (“they heard”) is normally pronounced /il.zɔ̃ ɑ̃.tɑ̃.dy/ or, in more careful speech, /il.zɔ̃.tɑ̃.tɑ̃.dy/. A speaker using this "politician" pronunciation would say /il.zɔ̃t ǀ ɑ̃.tɑ̃.dy/ (where /ǀ/ represents a pause; ils ont'… entendu). One might even hear ils ont décidé (“they decided”) pronounced /il.zɔ̃t ǀ de.si.de/ (ils ont’… décidé) or /il.zɔ̃.təː(ːːː) de.si.de/ (ils ont’euh… décidé). In the first example, we have liaison without enchaînement, not the normal configuration in ordinary speech. In the second, the liaison is completely non-standard, since it introduces a liaison consonant before another consonant.
the presence of a schwa or a pause in some liaisons can occur in normal native speaker speech, when he hezitates
the same can  be true for the apperance of the t in "is ont décidé" (maybe the speaker was hezitating between "décidé" et "envisagé") if the phenomenon stay rare...
but in the case of Chirac, there is a real deformation of the normal process of the liaison, attested by the high frequencie of such prononciations,
taking Chirac as an "example" is dangerous : he doesnt only prononce his liaisons with pauses or shwa but with glottal stops. (Kwowing that glottal stop never occur in obligatory liaison, what can we deduce of their systematic presence in optional liaisons in some speakers speech ?)
that kind of deformation of the liaison, and the production of unnecessary glottal stops can be heard in a growing number of speakers (are they still native speakers of french ? lot of them have a mixed background of overseas/north african/occitan family, Chirac and Bayrou are in the third category, Royal in the first one and other distortions of the caracteristic french phonological system can be observed in their speech : Chirac says "la pé" instead of correct "la pè" for the words "la paix", Royal pronounce her imparfait "mangeais" like "manger")
those speakers, apparently native french, doesnt not display the genuine mecanisms of the french language. Scholars wanting to study those pure phenomenons in french have be very carefull before accepting anybody that dont have an other mother language than french as a "native french speaker" (Bayrou also speaks  "bearnais", a variety of occitan; probably Chirac understands the corrèze variety of occitan too, but does he speaks, I dont know ? Does Royal speaks or have spoken in her childhood an african language ? where did their parents come from ?). Especially the mother tongue (see the debate on that concept) of the parents and grand-parents, insisting on matriarcal genealogy. On the other hand, Sarkozy, who emigrated to France at the age of eleven has probably learnd the language by immersion in a traditional speaking environment and does not display phonological deformation, even if his prononciation sometimes seems a little exotic (?)
stefjourdan@caramail.com  (user "motunono" in french wikipedia)
:Thanks, those are very helpful comments.  I'd just add, in regard to the examples from Littré, that it is valuable if the article also covers now-obsolete systems of liaison, with a clear specification, of course, that they are obsolete.  I'd hate to see valuable information about past speakers' preferences removed from the encyclopedia, just because it is no longer current; the article is not a how-to and can consider the subject diachronically.  Wareh 15:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some remarks, excuse my english...  

message: The version that I tried to edit (but got reverted) contains incorrect OR:
*"The French could of course have chosen to always write the consonant (e.g. il parlet)"
::No. This would mean that "Jean parlet t-à sa mère" is predicted to be a good liaison, but it is in fact a hypercorrection. Contrast with "Jean et Marie parlent t-à leur mère", which has a completely different status.
*"This occurs with the present tense of all non-er verbs"
::No. Not ouvrir, (ac)cueillir, assaillir, …, or avoir
I attempted to sidestep the issue of diachronic continuity, because so far I have not found a source to confirm the very strong claim that "in 100% of cases it is the preservation of an ancient t". In the following examples, what evidence is there that an ancient t is still preserved?
:et je cuit que si fera il (Erec et Enide, 12th cent.)
:Et lors a il encontré jusqu'a vint homes armez (Queste, 13th cent.)
The answer is not "obvious if you know French and Latin"; we will never know exactly what happened during all the centuries in between. Restoring this controversial, flagged statement without attempting to provide a source is unacceptable. 
In my edits, I also removed the Latin "sources" because, for example, while chante does come from cantat, and on does come from homo, the suggestion that chante-t-on is the direct descendant of the Latin sentence cantat homo is ridiculous (among other things, because on developed as a proclitic to the verb). The final sentence "No French speaker would ever even accidentally say parl'il", although plausible, is also completely unverified OR. CapnPrep (talk) 13:39, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: November 2007 edit dispute

message: Do liaisons ever occur between names? For example, could Francois Olivier become Francois_Olivier? I've never heard the combination pronounced (by a French speaker). Is the liaison possible, or are names a "forbidden" case? Emmastaffron (talk) 20:03, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It is "forbidden". CapnPrep (talk) 20:10, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Liaison in Names?

message: The example je sens-t-en moi is obscure, I can only find sources online stating je sens dans moi which is correct French as far as I know. Simon de Danser (talk) 13:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Deleted. CapnPrep (talk) 18:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: La Vie en rose

message: Without it, all lines with a nasal vowel together with a liaison symbol go screwed up for the 3 computers in my home with Chrome and 2 of them with Firefox. It must be very widespread, because when I use Win7 all other diacritics and bridges that are messed up with XP and were with Vista work perfectly. It does not affect readability, but is very ugly. Can I restore it? Lguipontes (talk) 10:50, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Embedded template 

message: -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible image for article

message: If this section were right, liaison would happen in every language, which is not the case. The phenomenon is not liaison, it's enchaînement, linking of a final consonant which would be pronounced anyway to a word beginning with a vowel. Liaison is pronouncing a normally silent final consonant. Thus, it's characteristic of French. --Explosivo (talk) 15:14, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Liaison in other languages 

message: For impossible liaison before some words beginning with h.  I heard that words of Latin origin allow a liaison and elision (l'homme (lum), aucun homme (okuh num), but words of Frankish/Germanic origin do not (le homard (luh omar), aucun homard (okuh omar)).  In French dictionaries the aspirate-h are marked as *h in the H section, where no liaison or elision before the h is allowed, although h is no longer pronounced in French in any case.  A non-French speaker won't be able to tell unless they study how the word is marked in a dictionary.
66.241.130.86 (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impossible liaison:  aspirated H 

message: Albeit a bit old, the current title was nonetheless a result of a proper proposal (#Requested move 2 above) so I have to call into question Emir's approval of SpikeballUnion's request at WP:RM/TR as "technical", much less "uncontroversial". WP:Article titles prompts us to use concise titles, and since there is only one article about a phonological process called "liaison", while just "Liaison (phonological process)" may be rather acceptable, including both "French" and "phonological process" in the parenthetical disambiguation is inherently redundant. Nardog (talk) 09:48, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This move has been contested and reverted. If you want the move to take place then please open a formal RM discussion. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:51, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

text: I made the move because I believed the article was for the definition of the word "liaison" in French at first. It turns out it was for the phonological process in French. The brackets should clarify what the title actually is, not merely display some term associate with it. Just like how you have Africa (Toto song) and Africa (Roman province), the brackets should clarify what "Liaison" actually is. SpikeballUnion (talk) 13:35, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, sometimes the disambiguator is an associated term; for example, Tim James (basketball) is not a basketball and Property (philosophy) is not a philosophy. Gorobay (talk) 19:58, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent move 

message: Are you sure it's mute? All dictionaries state that -f is always pronounced, in TV shows I hear the same ("neuf lettres" always with [f], but "six lettres" without [s]). And the change -f -> -v here can be either euphonic or similar to adjectives ending in -f (vif/vive, neuf/neuve etc.).
PS, -q in "cinq" is also pronounced everywhere.
Siealex (talk) 17:12, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neuf is the only French word ending on mute -f.