This is a rule that we have all learned on school benches: “When a n precedes a MA B or a P, It turns into m.” GiftedMlead “,” beMBler “,” ChaMPignon “, and so on. In classrooms, it is now known as … the” Mbappé rule “!
Its origin is a phenomenon known as “articulatory laziness”. Because, I’m sorry to tell you a little brutally, but we are all lazy! Consciously or not, we seek to save the fatigue that represents speaking. This is how we collectively went from “chair” to “charcuterie”, for example, but also from “in-pact” (pronounce “inepacte”) with “impact”.
In the genre “what would a rule be without its exceptions”, now let me explain to you why we write “candy”, when it is etymologically a small bomb, in the sense of a small container? The question arises all the more that we are dealing here with a loan from Occitan “Boumbouno”. Still goes that sound [ou] southern has become [o] in French, but why the M Does he tend to give way to a n (In fact, the two spellings are allowed)? Well, well, imagine that you have to see the attraction of … “candy”!
Explanation. The term “candy” itself escapes our famous Mbappé rule, because, originally, it is the childish repetition of two separate words: “good” and “good”. The relationship with “Bybonne”? The two words are so much alike that the spelling of the first influenced that of the second!
I can’t resist no to the pleasure of talking to you about “overweight” (not mine, huh, that of the dictionary!), Which takes a good M in front of the B, But … not in front of the p. The reason? “Emblepoint” comes from the junction of “in good point”, which had as an initial sense “in good shape”. This is why it has been written “embominated” for one time. Until today’s fatal day of 1694 where the French Academy changed its spelling to recall the origin of the word, but did not do it halfway, restoring the n “good”, but not that of “in”.
An incomprehensible decision …