Le traitement de e dans un système de prononciation figurée du français au XVIIIe siècle: la « Coleccion de las falsas reglas » de Galmace

Abstract

This paper analyses the treatment of the ‘French e’ by Juan Henrique le Gallois de Grimarest –a teacher of French in mid-eighteenth century Spain– in the figurative pronunciation system used in his Nueva Gramática Francesa (1747). We use the vigorous criticism by Antonio Galmace of that system as the starting point of our analysis. Two years earlier, Galmace had published a short work dedicated solely to the teaching of pronunciation in which he used, before his rival did, a similar method of transcribing sounds. We particularly focus on the ‘French e’ because of the many problems caused when trying to represent this letter-sound.