Recent searches
Search options
We’re moving to a new city and the only community I can find for it is on #Facebook.
So, as much as I don’t want to, I decide to make a Facebook account again just to access this community…
(This is why communities must not be locked behind the walled gardens of surveillance capitalists. But even if we create fedi/Small Web alternatives, we still need to let the existing ones know they exist somehow.)
…Anyway, long story short, I can’t – they’ve #blacklisted my name :)
O hai, Mark! 
… But their name filter is diacritic-sensitive… so I give you my doppelganger – or should I say doppelgänger – now with 50% more Frenchness…
*sigh*
PS. To pronounce my name correctly, all the vowels would have accent graves on them.
@aral fun fact: there is actually no pronunciation difference between “a” and “à” in French (also it’s an accentuated letter we rarely use inside words) 
@GuillaumeL Oh, I thought it was a longer “ah” sound (which is how you pronounce all the vowels in my name… or at least how I do) :)
@aral French accents usually mean a bunch of letters were dropped from the Latin word. Most accentuated letters are supposed to have a phonetic twist in theory, but as often with French, the theory is complex (see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prononciation_du_fran%C3%A7ais?wprov=sfti1#Voyelles_2) so we made up an even gnarlier practice 
In modern everyday speech “é” and “è” do have their own pronunciation but not “à”, “î”, “û”… So you’re right in that “à”, like all French “a”’s, is an open front [a] which can sound longer to some ears.