Cuidoient
Phonetic Interpretation
by
Katrusha Skomorokh
In my most recent language
project, I focused on a song in French called 'Cuidoient li
losengier'. The song was written by Guillebert de Berneville in the
13th Century and can be found in The Anthology of
Music: Medieval Music, on page 73. The point of this project was
to teach myself proper medieval French phonetics.
My fall back for learning
any language is to use IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet). It
is something my mind can fully understand and using the knowledge
from the descriptions of various phonemes, I am able to create the
necessary sounds needed to produce the language as it was hopefully
produced in the time period of Guillebert de Berneville.
The difficulty with this
project, as with any project that comes to language, is that you will
always have regional variants and discrepancies. As stated in Singing
Early Music, “Conon de
Bethune was embarrassed by the mockery by court people (even by the
queen) of his regionalized Artois or Picard speech, and he claims in
a poem that it is uncourtly to make fun of someone else's
pronunciation.” In other words, our most useful guide to
pronunciation through the ages is by looking at written text. The
earlier the text, the more probable that all letters that are seen
were meant to be pronounced. This
created the issue (or perhaps the pleasant knowledge) that as the
centuries came and went, it was usually the uneducated that would
would continue to reflect the evolution of pronunciation. Just as
children have a tendency to spell based on the sound instead of the
actual proper spelling, uneducated people in the middle ages gave us
hints as to the pronunciations while the educated told us the correct
spellings.
We
can also see a lot of influences of French in Middle English or
Middle High German and vice versa. This can also help us to figure
out pronunciations as well. Taking everything into consideration with
this song, from what education the man who wrote it may have had to
the region where he was located and the time period of the piece all
helped me begin to learn what could have been the pronunciation of
'Cuidoient li losengier'.
To
begin this research, I decided to work backwards. It is much easier
to see how things would be pronounced now and start working through
the language in that manner. Being completely clueless as to what
French even sounds like (it was not my language of choice during my
school years), I found I was in need of some help.
The
first verse of the song reads as such:
Coidoient
li losengier
Por
ce se il ont menti
Que
je me doie eslongnier
D'amors
et de mon ami
E non
Dieu, je l'amerai
Et
bone amor servirai
Nuit
et jor
Sans
fere folor
Et
g'iere envoisie
Chantant
et jolie
I
asked for a phonetic interpretation. Here in lies one of the biggest
difficulties in language. Studying it is really an activity where you
need to actively be listening. Spellings, dialect differences, and
personal preference can all create problems for someone trying to
work out pronunciations.
This
is the phonetic translation that I was given:
kwee-dwah-ehnt
lee loh-sehn-zjer
pohr
keh she eel ohnt mehn-tee
keh
zjuh meh dwah ehs-lwahn-zjehr
dah-mohrs
eht deh mohn ah-mee
ah
nohn deeoo zjeh lahm-ehr-ay
eht
bohn ah-mor sehr-vee-ray
nooeet
eht zjohr
sahns
feh-reh foh-lohr
eh
zjeehr-eh ehn-vwah-zee
shahn-tahnt
eht zjoh-lee
In
IPA, in my opinion, that would be written like this:
kwidwaɛnt li losɛnʤiɛɹ
pɔɹ keɪ seɪ il oʊnt
mɛnti
keɪ ʤʌ mɛ dwa ɛslwaŋʤiɛɹ
damɔɹs ɛt dɛ mɔn ami
ɛ nɔn diʊ ʤɛ lamɛreɪ
ɛt bɔnɛ amɔɹ sɛɹviɛreɪ
nʊit ɛt ʤɔɹ
sans fɛɹɛ foʊlɔɹ
ɛ ʤiɛɹɛ ɛnvwazi
ʃantant ɛt ʤoʊli
This
was my experiment of reading it out loud to myself before properly
hearing what it sounded
like. The biggest flaws in my first dry run is not having the
nasalized vowels [ã, ɛ̃,
ɔ̃, and æ̃] or the
voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] which is much different from our voiced
alveolar approximant
[ɹ].
I sat down and listened to
the pronunciation of this verse again as well as taking my French
dictionary that has the pronunciations written in IPA, I was able to
create a new written idea of how this would be pronounced in modern
French. Unfortunately, many words were not in the dictionary as this
is a Medieval poem and a
lot of changes have happened in language since then,
so I had to trust my friend's thoughtful pronunciation.
kwidwaɛ̃t li lɔzɛ̃ʒiʁ
pɔʁ sə sə il mɛ̃ti
kə ʒə mə dwa ɛslwãʒiʁ
damuʁz e də mɔ̃ ami
ø nɔ̃ djø ʒə lamɛʁe
e bɔ̃ɛ amuʁ sɛʁviʁe
nɥi e ʒɔʁ
sã feʁe fɔloʁ
ø ʒiʁe ãvwazi
ʃãtã
e ʒɔli
Of
course, I then began to wonder what, exactly, the medieval
pronunciation of this song would be. An alphabet has two rules when
it is created. Those rules are:
1.
Each symbol should represent a sound.
2. No spoken sound should be
represented by more than one symbol.
In those regards, that means that
as language evolves, we get the confusion of multiple letters
together creating a new sound, or even letters becoming silent
depending on the words. The only way to figure out how this song
would have been pronounced would be to start at the beginning of
language (as close as we are able to study) and slowly move forward
to the time and place where this particular song was created.
As questions began to arise, I
began working side by side by side with the modern French dictionary,
my text book from the International Phonetic Association, and a
wonderful book called Singing Early Music that specifically
looks at the changes of language using the International Phonetic
Alphabet.
Where to start? Well, there are
important things to look at. First, I searched for a visual of the
actual manuscript, as there is a lot you can learn from looking at
the actual piece. I also wanted to do some research on the author of
the piece as well as the area he was from and any other little
tidbits that would help me to learn more about how things would be
pronounced.
I began by scrutinizing the
manuscript while looking back and forth with the recent publication
in a more modern musical notation. There is so much that can
plausibly be lost in translation, so I wanted to make sure that I was
able to view the actual source instead of just someone else's
interpretation of the source. I am glad I did. There are various
things I learned, all were were important, from viewing the
manuscript.
-Space was, for some reason,
limited, even though the song was laid out where new lines would just
start wherever the word would fit. There is an interesting mix of
omitting whole words (in the slight chorus-like refrain that is seen
in 4 of the 5 verses), omitting letters (also in that chorus-like
refrain), and squishing extra letters above the word in question to
finish the word. It seems, often, like poor planning.
-The scribing, for that time
period, was sloppy without proper kerning or straight lines for the
letters.
-The authors signature was in the
middle of the page between song lyrics. This could mean that this was
a book passed around by various authors, perhaps even a book of the
Puy d'Arras (which I will talk about later).
-I find it odd that the repeated
section (that only differs, alone, in the second verse) starts,
written in the music, as "et siere (it honestly looks like an s,
not a g like all the others) envoisie. chantant et jolie." The
second verse states "sen sui renvoisie chãtãt." which
makes it look familiar to the modern IPA for the song. It then stops
there with no symbol to mean 'continue the phrase' or anything. The
third says "et giere envoisie." (fixed from the first
ending) again ending with no further symbol. The fourth, "et
giere." and then the last, "et giere envoisie chantant et
jolie." returning us back to the original full phrasing.
-It is impossible, by viewing the
manuscript by an amateur like me, to be able to tell rhyme scheme or
meter of the piece. But I know that trouveres were very big on rhyme
and meter, so the only way I was going to learn more about that was
through IPA and looking at the Oxford Anthology printed edition of
the song.
It was now time to begin looking
at the difference between modern French and Medieval French. The
biggest changes, of course, are between the alphabet actually being
used to its full extent in Early French (remember the rules for an
alphabet?) and certain phonemes either no longer being used or having
been simplified by the time we get to modern French.
So,
for example, let's look at the early French IPA translation
possibility for the song (for, as Conon would say, there are regional
varieties and we shouldn't make fun. But according to Singing
Early Music,
these rules were traditionally used through most of France) next to
the Modern. The early French will be on the left, modern on the
right.
kɥidɔjãnt
li lɔsãnʤjɛr̥ kwidwaɛ̃t li lɔzɛ̃ʒiʁ
pɔr̥
ʦə sə il õnt mãnti pɔʁ sə sə il ɔ̃ mɛ̃ti
kə
ʤə mə dɔjɛslɔjɲjɛr̥ kə ʒə mə dwaslwãʒiʁ
dãmɔr̥s
ɛt də mõn ãmi damuʁz e də mɔ̃ ami
ɛ
nõn djɛw ʤə lãmər̥ɛ ø nɔ̃ djø ʒə lamɛʁe
ɛt
bõnãmɔr̥ sɛr̥vir̥ɛ e bɔ̃amuʁ sɛʁviʁe
nɥit
ɛt ʤɔr̥ nɥi e ʒɔʁ
sãns
fɛr̥ɛ fɔlɔr̥ sã feʁe fɔloʁ
ɛt
ʤjɛrãnvɔjsiə ø ʒiʁãvwazi
ʧãntãnt ɛt ʤɔliə ʃãtãt
e ʒɔli
What
we are seeing here is that in early French, all letters were
pronounced, unlike in modern French. There is also a difference in
the [r̥] and the [ʁ]. The first is a voiceless alveolar tap or
flap, much like the modern r's in Spanish. The later, a voiced uvular
fricative,
was not even introduced into French speech until the mid-sixteenth
century, and even then it wasn't accepted into cultured speech
(poetry, music, etc) until the end of the seventeenth century
(Singing
Early Music,
pg 73). Most of the sounds are seen in both the early and modern
French, though. It is in the vowels that the most changes happen
through time.
But
was this an early French song, teetering in the 13th
century when a lot of changes happen in language? It is now time to
answer some further questions. Early French is stated to go from
1100-1250, while middle French is stated to go from 1250-1450, so
being in the century that sees a lot of change (which, of course,
didn't happen in a year, but we can at least lean towards one
graduation or the other based on spellings, life of the author, and
where/what was going on at that time/place), it was time to broaden
my research to more than just the linguistics of a single song.
As
is stated in the book Singing
Early Music,
“...all were increasingly dominated from the end of the twelfth
century by Francien, the language used by the royal court...” This
helps us in being able to believe that troubadours of France who were
seen in courts would, most likely, according to this and the words of
Conon, be speaking the same dialect as the courts spoke. So although
there is a possibility of dialect differences, we can feel fairly
certain that this will not be a huge discrepancy for our troubadour
in question.
Gillebert
de Berneville is stated to have flourished between 1250-1280. He was
a French trouvere that, in his time, was appreciated and popular.
Despite this, his songs are only seen in a handful of chansonniers.
Gillebert had
contact with the a lot of prominent men around the area of Arras,
close to his home of Berneville. He worked with many poets in the
region and even competed (and had one poem crowned) in the Puy
d'Arras.
The Puy d'Arras was a medieval
poetical society in Arras that held competitions between trouveres in
courtly love lyrics. The president, annually elected, presided over
the competitions. Its favored style of poetry was the jeu parti,
composed when one troubadour would present a questions and take it up
in debate with another, each taking different sides.
The region of Arras was a huge
culture center in France, especially for trouveres. Between the
culture, the society of Puy d'Arras, and the important figures seen
in Gillebert's life, he was certainly educated well enough that he
would most likely be in the trending of where language was at that
time, leaving us with the decision to use middle French. In fact, as
in 1180 Arras became an important location for banking and trade,
wool being of great importance since the 4th century, the entire area
would be following language trends, for certain.
But the manuscript was not helping
me learn a date. Gillebert flourished for 30 years, but that doesn't
even mean that this was written during his years of flourishing The
Oxford Anthology, though, has a bibliography under the musical bars.
It says:
R 1287; Paris; Biblioteque de
l'Arsenal, MS 5198, p. 145.
Whether
this means the song was written in 1287 or the book was finished in
1287, I do not know. But we can work on the middle French and then
view the differences between the two and use that to determine which
we should be using. Once
again, we will look at early French on the left and middle French on
the right.
kɥidɔjãnt
li lɔsãnʤjɛr̥ kɥidwɛãn li lɔzãnʒjɛr̥
pɔr̥
ʦə sə il õnt mãnti pɔ sə sə i õn mãnti
kə
ʤə mə dɔjɛslɔjɲjɛr̥ kə ʒə mə dwɛlwɛɲjɛr̥
dãmɔr̥s
ɛt də mõn ãmi dãmɔr̥ ɛ də mõ ãmi
ɛ
nõn djɛw ʤə lãmər̥ɛ ɛ nõ djø ʒə lãmər̥ɛ
ɛt
bõnãmɔr̥ sɛr̥vir̥ɛ ɛ bõnãmɔr̥ sɛr̥vir̥ɛ
nɥit
ɛt ʤɔr̥ nɥi ɛ ʒɔr̥
sãns
fɛr̥ɛ fɔlɔr̥ sãn fɛr̥ɛ fɔlɔr̥
ɛt
ʤjɛrãnvɔjsiə ɛ ʒjɛrãnvwɛsiə
ʧãntãnt ɛt ʤɔliə ʃãntãn
ɛ ʤɔliə
So,
how do we decide which is more likely? I go back to the original
manuscript. That one small discrepancy that I spoke of where
letters/words were omitted.
The
second verse states "sen sui renvoisie chãtãt”. It
is obviously a quick handed manner of making sure people can still
read the word. It could be that the symbols that look like ~'s above
the a's could be tiny n's. But the one thing they are not able to get
rid of are the t's. Perhaps because, in that time period, not all the
t's would be pronounced which means, if you didn't write them, people
would think it was a different word. Look at the English word 'sign'.
If someone left out the 'g' because you can't hear it in there (as an
uneducated person may), we have the word 'sin'. Completely different
words with completely different meanings. This makes me lean towards
the middle English for phonetic transcription.
Also,
it is said in Singing
Early Music
that in early French, any time two vowels were next to each other,
they were each pronounced separately. Many were starting to blend in
middle French. Because of this, the only way for the song to have a
measured meter is if it were in middle French.
I also took the opportunity to
view other trouvere songs of the time period, both the examples in
the book as well as a book of women troubadours of France. They also
had similar spellings for words that earlier (and, of course, later
period) did not concur with. This confirmed two things for me. One,
that Gillebert was educated. And two, that Arras was strongly
influenced, because of its culture and activity, by the changing
languages making them well seated in middle French at that time.
Most
of the changes were in silencing of letters or in the vowels. There
wasn't much change in the actual consonants. There were certainly
rules seen for middle French as far as how to pronounce words. Here
is a quick notation on them, taken from the easily more explained
versions in Singing
Early Music:
-spellings
do not reflect pronunciation
-simplified
affricatives: [s], [ʃ], [ʒ]
-silent
[s] seen before consonants and in final position
-loss
of many final consonants
-c
before an a, o, or u is pronounced [k]; before an e or i is
pronounced [s]
-ch
is pronounced [ʃ]
-g
before an a, o, or u is pronounced [ɡ]; before an e or i is
pronounced [ʒ]
-j is
pronounced [ʒ]
-l at
the beginning of a word or syllable is pronounced [l]; if followed by
a consonant, even if in the next word, is pronounced [w]; if il or
ill, pronounced [ʎ]
-n
and m both are still pronounced after their nasalized vowels
-[ɲ]
is pronounced much like the Spanish ñ and usually spelled gn or ign
-q or
qu is pronounced [k]
-r is
pronounced [r̥] much like in modern Spanish or Italian
-rr
is pronounced as [r̥] with a single tap only in speech, having not
been accepted in song as such until mid 17th C.
-all
final consonants disappeared in popular language, but in literary
(song and poetry), the situation was complex. Inside a line of verse,
s was only pronounced if the following word began with a vowel and it
was voiced: [z]. At a pause or end of the line a final s was fully
pronounced [s]. Inside a word s was always silent even
though it remained in spellings until 18th C. Before disappearing, s
was pronounced in an aspirated form [x] before transforming into a
lengthening of vowel form. (To me, I am hearing... s is forever and
always silent when followed by a consonant unless it ended a word or
began a word. It certainly confuses me quite a bit, that's for
certain.)
-x was used commonly for -us which
was usually pronounced as [ws]
-z is pronounced [s]
There are also many rules for the
vowels because, as I mentioned, they were starting to muddle and flow
together at that point. I recommend picking up the book to learn more
in that aspect as it is much too much to describe here.
It wasn't until after I had
finished all the IPA for the song that I learned two incredibly
important things that will help in learning the music and singing the
piece.
-The rhyme scheme is
a/b/a/b/c/c/d/d/e/e
-The meter scheme is
7/7/7/7/7/7/3/5/6/6
With that new knowledge, I was
able to use IPA to finish the rest of the song.
(Please click on pictures to make them larger.)
Here I have rewritten the manuscript in IPA and it wasn't until I placed the musical notes on the staff did the music finally make sense to me. It is because in IPA I am able to see and know where the syllable breaks are that, looking at the actual language, I have no idea. For example, I always know the fourth syllable gets a three trilled note on one of the lines while all the other syllables in that line only get a single note. It does not mean that they are all whole notes or half notes. Just that each syllable is a mono - tone instead of a poly - tone. Being able to visualize all the breaks in the words is very helpful as I have, many times, tried to sing songs before where you can never figure out where syllables are to be placed according to the notes or even how many syllables a word has to be able to place them to the notes.
Here is the consonant chart along with the diagram of sound creation within the head. This chart shows all the consonant sounds that will be seen and used in Middle French. Of course, we can't say for certain that this is true without a doubt as we do now know that people made fun of accents of those in the same country. You will notice that all the consonants stay within the mouth, especially closer to the front. The closer we get towards modern French, the more we see a lot of the sounds moving uvular, more towards the back of the throat.
Here on the vowel chart, we can see the triangle formed by the various vowels in the mouth. The diagram at the top shows us the frontal closed sound of [i] which is pronounced like the sound in 'bee'. In the upper back of the mouth, still closed, we have the sound [u] like in the word 'too'. Our palate then rises as out tongue drops, mouth opening, and we find ourself with the more open [a] sound pronounced like 'baa'. All the vowels we will find, with the exception of those that have the [~] mark which makes them nasalized, all our vowels are going to be voiced within this small triangle formed in the mouth. Where you see the [e] next to the [y] sound, the only difference is that when we say [e], our lips are usually spread wide. If we round our lips into a more circular shape, we produce the sound [y]. You may not hear it right away, but that is because we are not always able to hear or pronounce phonemes that we do not use growing up: they leave our vocabulary, so to speak. Typically when two symbols are beside each other, though, you can experiment with the sound that on the left is more open and wide, and on the right is more rounded and tight.
When we look at modern French, we find more of our vowels becoming nasalized and pushing more towards the back of the throat, forcing the triangle seen here to change shape and location in the mouth.
With all this knowledge one can more confidently be able to pronounce words as they may have been pronounced in the past, being able to create the music with more of a period feel than we often can with our more modern learning.
I know that my research here really forces people to have a deeper knowledge of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) than many possibly may already have, so I would like to refer people to my starter course on IPA that I created, trying to keep the information in layman's terms in hopes that reading that will help teach someone enough that they can begin to understand more of what I am doing with my language research. Please view that handout here.
Bibliography
McGee, Timothy J., A. G. Rigg and David
N. Klausner, eds. Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of
European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Berneville, Guillebert de. “Cuidoient
li losengier.” The Oxford Anthology of Music: Medieval Music.
Ed. W Thomas Marrocco and Nicholas Sandon. Oxford: University Press.
1977. 73.
Handbook of International
Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International
Phonetic Alphabet.
Cambridge: University Press. 1999. 78-81.
Bogin,
Meg. The Women Troubadours.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 1976.
Barron's French – English
Dictionary.
United States: Barron's Educational Series, Inc. 2006.
