Joe Biden: Now I've Decided I'm Also French and I Might Even Be a Descendant of the Marquis De Lafayette

Wow, he's a civil rights marcher, he's half-Puerto-Rican, he's a football All-American.

Now he's a "Son of the American Revolution."

He says his name is, as he pronounces it, "RobinAY."

People have a real problem with French endings so let me explain this, because it's actually pretty simple.

The name "Robinette" would be pronounced rob-in-ETTE, just like we'd say it in English. The "ette" sounds the same way as it does in "cigarette."

French does drop most single letter consonant endings. For example, if his stupid name were "RobinET," with one t, the t would be silent and the "e" would sound like a long a.

But when you have doubled consonant or an "e" at the end, the consonant is pronounced, and the -e is short. So Robinet would be rob-in-AY, but Robinette is rob-in-et.

The way I think about this -- which is, of course, the correct way to think about this -- is that when there's a double consonant, or an e after the consonant, those additional letters themselves are silent (that is, the e at the end is not pronounced). But because those final letters are silent, the letters that come before them are NOT silent. The additional letters get The Silent Treatment, "protecting" the letters before that so they they are not silenced.

Here's an example: The male French name Francois is pronounced fran-swah, with the s silent. But the female version of the name, Francoise, is pronounced Fran-swhaZZZ. The "s" get pronounced now because the e "protects" it from being the last letter. The "s" Francois is the last letter, so it's silent, but the "s" in Francoise is NOT the last letter, so it gets pronounced.

A similar example: the male form of the adjective for white is "blanc." The c is not pronounced, so the world is pronounced "blah." (The "n" is pronounced but through your nose. It's a "nasalized" n.) But the feminine form is "blanche." The "ch" is pronounced because the -e at the end protects the letters before it.

It's very simple and people struggle with this so I just thought I'd give you the rule.

There's a special rule for the -ent ending of third person plural verbs but I don't want to get into that. It doesn't come up in English much.

I know this is a disposable post so don't worry, I'll write up another one quickly.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:08 PM

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