poignant

[thedaffodils]

Hi,

I am curious why there's a [j] is pronounced between "n" and "ant" in the word-poignant. Is it explainable?

Thank you!

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

It comes from the French and is the present participle of the verb poindre. It has partly retained the French pronunciation in which the combination 'gn' sounds like 'nj'.

 

[emsr2d2]

Bear in mind that in English pronunciation, there is no "j" in that word. We use a hard "j" in English, like at the start of the word "jam". It is pronounced "poin-y-uh-nt". In addition, as far as I know, "poignant" is an adjective in both English and French.

I agree with Roman55 that it has only partly retained its French pronunciation, which would be "pwun-nyon" (silent "t" at the end").

 

[Roman55]

Just to be clear here, the [j] is the IPA transcription of a y sound and it is present in the English word poignant.

It is, of course, an adjective, but in French it is derived from (and still is) the present participle of the verb poindre.

 

[emsr2d2]

I don't know IPA so thanks for that. I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't the present participle of "poindre", simply pointing out that it's used as an adjective.