vînmes

French

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /vɛ̃m/
Audio (file)

Verb

vînmes

first-person plural past historic of venir

Usage notes

Tînmes, vînmes, ennui and all of their derivatives (such as soutînmes) are the only known French words with nasal vowels before a nasal consonant (no examples with /ɛ̃ɲ/). This is because Standard French historically has denasalized all vowels before intervocalic nasals (but not with syllable-final nasal), however, it is not done in some langues d'oïl. These sequences were later reintroduced through morphological analogy (Old French venistes changes to vîntes based on vint and -îtes).