• Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    tbh, the n isn’t silent in french, it serves to make the /ɔ̃/ sound (it’s kind of a nasally O) with the “on” digraph

    (adressed at anyone reading) btw, does the /ɔ̃/ sound even exist in english? i can’t find any example of it…

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
      3·
      2 months ago

      The way the quizzical “huh” is sometimes pronounced is close perhaps? I don’t know if I’d call that an English word though.

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 months ago

      I mean, no letters are really silent, they affect the pronunciation of adjacent letters.

      I’d say you don’t pronounce the ‘n’ like an ‘n’, making it silentish, and it affects the adjacent ‘o’, giving it a more gutteral sound.

      Now if only I could roll an ‘r’ instead of gurgle it