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/dizɛ/, dise /diz/, dis /di/. 2Until the eighteenth century. 3With the disused variant dize. 4long infinitive 5In modern times, scheva. 6Derived from the unrelated Latin verb narrāre "to tell (a story)". Note also the pronunciations: narrer /ˈnarrere/, narat /ˈnarada/, at naradu /a nnaˈradu/, naraiat /narˈaiada/, nabat /ˈnabata/, nerzat /ˈnertsada/, niet /ˈniete/, nara /ˈnara/. 7Sicilian now uses imperfect subjunctive dicissi in place of present subjunctive. The main tense and mood distinctions that were made in classical Latin are generally still present in the modern Romance languages, though many are now expressed through compound rather than simple verbs. The passive voice, which was mostly synthetic in classical Latin, has been completely replaced with compound forms. Owing to sound changes which made it homophonous with the preterite, the Latin future indicative tense was dropped, and replaced with a periphrasis of the form infinitive + present tense of habēre (to have). Eventually, this structure was reanalysed as a new future tense. In a similar process, an entirely new conditional form was created. While the synthetic passive voice of classical Latin was abandoned in favour of periphrastic constructions, most of the active voice remained in use. However, several tenses have changed meaning, especially subjunctives. For example: The Latin pluperfect indicative became a conditional in Sicilian, and an imperfect subjunctive in Spanish. The Latin pluperfect subjunctive developed into an imperfect subjunctive in all languages except Romansh, where it became a conditional, and Romanian, where it became a pluperfect indicative. The Latin preterite subjunctive, together with the future perfect indicative, became a future subjunctive in Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician. The Latin imperfect subjunctive became a personal infinitive in Portuguese and Galician. Many Romance languages have two verbs "to be". One is derived from Vulgar Latin *essere < Latin esse "to be" with an admixture of forms derived from sedēre "to sit", and is used mostly for essential attributes; the other is derived from stāre "to stand", and mostly used for temporary states. This development is most notable in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. In French, Italian and Romanian, the derivative of stāre largely preserved an earlier meaning of "to stand/to stay", although in modern Italian, stare is used in a few constructions where English would use "to be", as in sto bene "I am well". In Old French, the derivatives of *essere and stāre were estre and ester, respectively. In modern French, estre persists as être "to be" while ester has been lost as a separate verb; but the former imperfect of ester is used as the modern imperfect of être (e.g. il était "he was"), replacing the irregular forms derived from Latin (e.g. ere(t), iere(t) < erat). In Italian, the two verbs share the same past participle, stato. sedēre persists most notably in the future of *essere (e.g. Spanish/Portuguese/French/etc. ser-, Italian sar-), although in Old French the future is a direct derivation from Latin, e.g. (i)ert "he will be" < erit. See Romance copula for further information. For a more detailed illustration of how the verbs have changed with respect to classical Latin, see Romance verbs. During the Renaissance, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and a few other Romance languages developed a progressive aspect which did not exist in Latin. In French, progressive constructions remain very limited, the imperfect generally being preferred, as in Latin. Many Romance languages now have a verbal construction analogous to the present perfect of English. In some, it has taken the place of the old preterite (at least in the vernacular); in others, the two coexist with somewhat different meanings (cf. English I did vs. I have done). A few examples: preterite only: Galician, Asturian, Sicilian, Leonese, Portuguese, some dialects of Spanish; preterite and present perfect: Catalan, Occitan, standard Spanish; present perfect predominant, preterite now literary: French, Romanian, several dialects of Italian, some dialects of Spanish; present perfect only: Romansh Note that in Catalan, the synthetic preterite is predominantly a literary tense, except in Valencian; but an analytic preterite (formed using an auxiliary vadō, which in other languages signals the future) persists in speech, with the same meaning. In Portuguese, a morphological present perfect does exist but has a different meaning (closer to "I have been doing"), and is rare in practice. The following are common features of the Romance languages (inherited from Vulgar Latin) that are different from Classical Latin: Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify. The normal clause structure is SVO, rather than SOV, and is much less flexible than in Latin. Many Latin constructions involving nominalized verbal forms (e.g. the use of accusative plus infinitive in indirect discourse and the use of the ablative absolute) were dropped in favor of constructions with subordinate clause. Exceptions can be found in Italian, for example, Latin tempore permittente > Italian tempo permettendo; L. hoc facto > I. ciò fatto. Lexicon Borrowing Romance languages have borrowed heavily, though mostly from other Romance languages. However, some, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and French, have borrowed heavily from other language groups. Vulgar Latin borrowed first from indigenous languages of the Roman empire, and during the Germanic folk movements, from Germanic languages, especially Gothic. Notable examples are *blancus "white", replacing native albus (but Romansh alv, Dalmatian jualb, Romanian alb); *guerra "war", replacing native bellum; and the words for the cardinal directions, where cognates of English "north", "south", "east" and "west" replaced the native words septentriō, merīdiēs (also "noon; midday nap"; cf. Romanian meriză), oriens, and occidens. (See History of French – The Franks.) Some Celtic words were incorporated into the core vocabulary, partly for words with no Latin equivalent (betulla "birch", camisia "shirt", cerevisia "beer"), but in some cases replacing Latin vocabulary (gladius "sword", replacing ensis; cambiāre "to exchange", replacing mūtāre except in Romanian and Portuguese; carrus "cart", replacing currus; pettia "piece", largely displacing pars (later resurrected) and eliminating frustum). Many Greek words also entered the lexicon. e.g. spatha "sword" (replacing gladius which shifted to "iris", cf. French épée, Spanish espada, Italian spada and Romanian spadă); cara "face" (partly replacing faciēs); colpe "blow" (replacing ictus, cf. Spanish golpe, French coup); cata "each" (replacing quisque); common suffixes *-ijāre/-izāre (French oyer/-iser, Spanish -ear/-izar, Italian -eggiare/-izzare, etc.), -ista. Lexical innovation Many basic nouns and verbs, especially those that were short and/or had irregular morphology, were replaced by longer derived forms with regular morphology. Nouns, and sometimes adjectives, were often replaced by diminutives, e.g. auris "ear" > auricula (orig. "outer ear") > oricla (Sardinian origra, Italian orecchia/o, Portuguese orelha, etc.); avis "bird" > avicellus (orig. "chick, nestling") > aucellu (Occitan aucèl, Friulian ucel, French oiseau, etc.); caput "head" > capitium (Portuguese cabeça, Spanish cabeza, French chevet "headboard"; but reflexes of caput were retained also, sometimes without change of meaning); vetus "old" > vetulus > veclus (Dalmatian vieklo, Italian vecchio, Portuguese velho, etc.). Sometimes augmentative constructions were used instead: piscis "fish" > Old French peis > peisson (orig. "big fish") > French poisson. Verbs were often replaced by frequentative constructions: canere "to sing" > cantāre; iacere "to throw" > iactāre > *iectāre (Italian gettare, Portuguese jeitar, Spanish echar, etc.); iuvāre > adiūtāre (Italian aiutare, Spanish ayudar, French aider, etc.); vēnārī "hunt" > replaced by *captiāre "to hunt", frequentative of capere "to seize" (Italian cacciare, Portuguese caçar, Romansh catschar, French chasser, etc.). Many Classical Latin words became archaic or poetic and were replaced by more colloquial terms: equus "horse" > caballus (orig. "nag") (but equa "mare" remains, cf. Spanish yegua); domus "house" > casa (orig. "hut"); ignis "fire" > focus (orig. "hearth"); strāta "street" > rūga (orig. "furrow") or callis (orig. "footpath") (but strāta is continued in Italian strada). In some cases, terms from common occupations became generalized: invenīre "to find" > Ibero-Romance (f)afflāre (orig. "to sniff out", in hunting, cf. Spanish hallar, Portuguese achar); advenīre "to arrive" > Ibero-Romance plicāre (orig. "to fold (sails)", cf. Spanish llegar, Portuguese chegar), elsewhere arripāre (orig. "to harbor at a riverbank", cf. Italian arrivare, French arriver) (advenīre is continued with the meaning "to achieve, mangage to do"; cf. Middle French aveindre) . The same thing sometimes happened to religious terms, due to the pervasive influence of Christianity: loquī "to speak" > parabolāre (orig. "to tell parables", cf. Occitan paraular, French parler) or fabulārī (orig. "to tell stories", cf. Spanish hablar, Portuguese falar), based on Jesus' way of speaking in parables. Many prepositions were used as verbal particles to make new roots and verb stems, e.g. Italian estrarre "to extract" from Latin ex- "out of" and trahere "to pull" (Italian trarre), or to augment already existing words, e.g. French coudre, Italian cucire, Portuguese coser "to sew", from cōnsuere "to sew up", from suere "to sew", with total loss of the bare stem. Many prepositions weakened and commonly became compounded, e.g. de ex > French dès "as of", ab ante > Italian avante "forward". Some words derived from phrases, e.g. Portuguese agora, Spanish ahora "now" < hāc hōrā "at this hour"; French avec "with" (prep.) < Old French avuec (adv.) < ab hoc "away from that"; Spanish tamaño, Portuguese tamanho "size" < tam magnum "so big"; Italian codesto "this, that" (near you) < Old Italian cotevesto < eccum tibi istum approx. "here's that thing of yours"; Portuguese você "you"[37] < vosmecê < vossemecê < Old Portuguese vossa mercee "your mercy".[38] A number of common Latin words that have disappeared in many or most Romance languages have survived either in the periphery or in remote corners (especially Sardinia). For example, Latin caseum "cheese" in the more outer places (Portuguese queijo, Romansh caschiel, Sardinian càsu, Romanian caş), but in the central areas has been replaced by formāticum, originally "moulded (cheese)" (French fromage, Occitan/Catalan formatge, Italian formaggio); similarly (com)edere "to eat (up)", which survives as Spanish/Portuguese comer but elsewhere is replaced by mandūcāre, originally "to chew" (French manger, Italian mangiare, Romanian mâncare). In some cases, one language happens to preserve a word displaced elsewhere, e.g. Italian ogni "everything" < omnes, displaced elsewhere by tōtum, originally "whole"; Friulian vaî "to cry" < flere "to weep"; Vegliote otijemna "fishing pole" < antenna "yardarm". Sardinian in particular preserves many words entirely lost elsewhere, e.g. emmo "yes" < immo "rather/yes/no", mannu "big" < magnus,[39] narare "to say" < narrāre "to tell", and domo "house" < (abl.) domō "at home". Sardinian even preserves some words that were already archaic in Classical Latin, e.g. àchina "grape" < acinam. Latinisms During the Middle Ages, scores of words were borrowed directly from Classical Latin (so-called latinisms), either in their original form (learned loans) or in a somewhat nativized form (semi-learned loans). These introduced many doublets, e.g. Latin fragilis > French fragile "fragile" (learned) vs. frêle "frail" (inherited); Latin fabrica "craft, manufacture" > French fabrique "factory" (learned) vs. forge "forge" (inherited), Spanish fábrica "factory" (learned) vs. fragua "forge" (inherited); Latin ferrum > Spanish fierro (learned) vs. hierro (inherited) both mean "iron"; Latin lēgālis "legal" > French légal "legal" (learned) vs. loyal "loyal" (inherited), Spanish legal "legal" (learned) vs. leal "loyal" (inherited); advōcātus "advocate" > French avocat "barrister (attorney)" (learned) vs. avoué "solicitor (attorney)" (inherited); Latin polīre "to polish" > Portuguese polir "to polish" (learned) vs. puir "to wear thin" (inherited). Sometimes triplets arise: Latin articulus "joint" > Portuguese artículo "joint, knuckle" (learned), artigo "article" (semi-learned), artelho "ankle" (inherited; archaic and dialectal). In many cases, the learned word simply displaced the original popular word, e.g. Spanish crudo "crude" (Old Spanish cruo); French légume "vegetable" (Old French leüm); Portuguese flor "flower" (Old Portuguese chor). The learned loan always looks more like the original than the inherited word does, since regular sound change has been bypassed; likewise, it usually has a meaning closer to the original. Borrowing from Classical Latin has produced a large number of suffix doublets. Examples from Spanish (learned form first): -ción vs. -zon; -cia vs. -za; -ificar vs. -iguar; -izar vs. -ear; -mento vs. -miento; -tud (< nominative -tūdō) vs. -dumbre (< accusative -tūdine); -ículo vs. -ejo; etc. Similar examples can be found in all the other Romance languages. This borrowing also introduced large numbers of classical prefixes in their original form (dis-, ex-, post-, trans-) and reinforced many others (re-, popular Spanish/Portuguese des- < dis-, popular French dé- < dis-, popular Italian s- < ex-). Many Greek prefixes and suffixes (hellenisms) also found their way into the lexicon: tele-, poli-/poly-, meta-, pseudo-, -scope/scopo, -logie/logia/logía, etc. Sound changes This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. See also: Vulgar Latin Consonants Significant sound changes affected the consonants of the Romance languages. Apocope There was a tendency to eliminate final consonants in Vulgar Latin, either by dropping them (apocope) or adding a vowel after them (epenthesis). Many final consonants were rare, occurring only in certain prepositions (e.g. ad "towards", apud "at, near (a person)"), conjunctions (sed "but"), demonstratives (e.g. illud "that (over there)", hoc "this"), and nominative singular noun forms, especially of neuter nouns (e.g. lac "milk", mel "honey", cor "heart"). Many of these prepositions and conjunctions were replaced by others, while the nouns were regularized into forms that avoided the final consonants (e.g. *lacte, *mele, *core). Final -m was dropped in Vulgar Latin. Even in Classical Latin, final -am, -um (accusative endings) was often elided in poetic meter, suggesting the m was weakly pronounced, probably marking the nasalisation of the vowel before it. This nasal vowel lost its nasalization in the Romance languages except in monosyllables, where it became /n/ (cf. Spanish quien < quem, French rien < rem). As a result, only the following final consonants occurred in Vulgar Latin: Final -t in third-person singular verb forms, and -nt (often reduced to -n) in third-person plural verb forms. Final -s in a large number of morphological endings (verb endings -ās/-ēs/-īs/-is, -mus, -tis; nominative singular -us/-is; plural -ās/-ōs/-ēs) and certain other words (trēs "three", crās "tomorrow", etc.). Final -n in some monosyllables (from earlier -m), and where -nt reduced to -n. Final -r, -d in some prepositions (e.g. ad, per), which were proclitic forms that attached phonologically to the following word. Very occasionally, final -c, e.g. Occitan oc "yes" < hoc (possibly protected by a final epenthetic vowel at one point). Final -t was eventually dropped in many languages, although this often occurred several centuries after the Vulgar Latin period. For example, the reflex of -t was dropped in Old French and Old Spanish only around AD 1100. In Old French, this occurred only when a vowel still preceded the consonant. Hence venit "he comes" > Old French vient, and the /t/ was never dropped. (It survives to this day in liaison forms, e.g. vient-il? "is he coming?" /vjɛ̃ti(l)/.) In Italo-Romance and Eastern Romance, eventually all final consonants were either dropped or protected by an epenthetic vowel, except in clitic forms (e.g. prepositions con, per). Modern Italian still has almost no consonant-final words, although Romanian has resurfaced them through later loss of final /u/. For example, amās "you love" > ame > ami; amant "they love" > *aman > amano. On the evidence of "sloppily written" Langobardic documents, however, the loss of final /s/ did not occur till the seventh or eighth century AD, after the Vulgar Latin period, and the presence of many former final consonants is betrayed by the syntactic gemination (raddoppiamento sintattico) that they trigger. It is also thought that /s/ became /j/ rather than simply disappearing: nōs > noi "we", s(ed)ēs > sei "you are", crās > crai "tomorrow" (southern Italian). In unstressed syllables, the resulting diphthongs were simplified: amīcās > /aˈmikai/ > amiche /aˈmike/ "(female) friends", where nominative amīcae should produce **amice rather than amiche (masculine amīcī > amici not **amichi). Central Western Romance languages eventually regained a large number of final consonants through the general loss of final /e/ and /o/, e.g. Catalan llet "milk" < lactem, foc "fire" < focum, peix "fish" < piscem. In French, most of these secondary final consonants were lost, but tertiary final consonants later arose through the loss of /ə/ < -a. Hence masculine frigidum "cold" > Old French /froit/ > froid /fʁwa/, feminine frigidam > Old French /froidə/ > froide /fʁwad/. Palatalization Palatalization was one of the most important processes affecting consonants in Vulgar Latin. This eventually resulted in a whole series of "palatal" and/or postalveolar consonants in most Romance languages, e.g. Italian /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ts/, /dz/, /ɲ/, /ʎ/. The following historical stages occurred: Stage Environment Consonants affected Result Languages affected 1 before /j/ (from -e,i- in hiatus) /t/, /d/ /tsʲ/, /jj~dzʲ~ddʒʲ/ all 2 all remaining, except labial consonants /ttʃʲ~ttsʲ/ < -ky-, /jj~ddʒʲ/ < -gy-, /ɲɲ/, /ʎʎ/, /Cʲ/ all except Sardinian 3 before /i/ /k/, /g/ /tʃʲ~tsʲ/, /j~dʒʲ/ all except Sardinian 4 before /e/ all except Sardinian and Dalmatian 5 before /a/ /tɕ~tʃʲ/, /dʑ~dʒʲ/ north-central Gallo-Romance (e.g. French, northern Occitan); Rhaeto-Romance Note how the environments become progressively less "palatal", and the languages affected become progressively fewer. The outcomes of palatalization depended on the historical stage, the consonants involved, and the languages involved. The primary division is between the Western Romance languages, with /ts/ resulting from palatalization of /k/, and the remaining languages (Italo-Romance and Eastern Romance) with /tʃ/ resulting. It is often suggested that /tʃ/ was the original result in all languages, with /tʃ/ > /ts/ a later innovation in the Western Romance languages. Evidence of this is the fact that Italian has both /ttʃ/ and /tts/ as outcomes of palatalization in different environments, while Western Romance has only /(t)ts/. Even more suggestive is the fact that Mozarabic, in southern Spain, had /tʃ/ as the outcome despite being in the "Western Romance" area and geographically disconnected from the remaining /tʃ/ areas; this suggests that Mozarabic was an outlying "relic" area where the change /tʃ/ > /ts/ failed to reach. (Northern French dialects, such as Norman and Picard, also had /tʃ/, but this may be a secondary development, i.e. due to a later sound change /ts/ > /tʃ/.) Note that /ts,dz,dʒ/ eventually became /s,z,ʒ/ in most Western Romance languages. Thus Latin caelum (sky, heaven), pronounced [ˈkailu(m)] with an initial [k], became Italian cielo [ˈtʃɛlo], Romanian cer [tʃer], Spanish cielo [ˈθjelo]/[ˈsjelo], French ciel [sjɛl], Catalan cel [ˈsɛɫ], and Portuguese céu [ˈsɛw]. The outcome of palatalized /d/ and /g/ is less clear: Original /j/ has the same outcome as palatalized /g/ everywhere. Romanian fairly consistently has /z/ < /dz/ from palatalized /d/, but /dʒ/ from palatalized /g/. Italian inconsistently has /ddz~ddʒ/ from palatalized /d/, and /ddʒ/ from palatalized /g/. Most other languages have the same results for palatalized /d/ and /g/: consistent /dʒ/ initially, but either /j/ or /dʒ/ medially (depending on language and exact context). But Spanish has /j/ initially except before /o/, /u/; nearby Gascon is similar. This suggests that palatalized /d/ > /dʲ/ > either /j/ or /dz/ depending on location, while palatalized /g/ > /j/; after this, /j/ > /(d)dʒ/ in most areas, but Spanish and Gascon (originating from isolated districts behind the western Pyrenees) were relic areas unaffected by this change. In French, the outcomes of /k/ palatalized by /e,i,j/ and by /a/ were different: centum "hundred" > cent /sɑ̃/ but cantum "song" > chant /ʃɑ̃/. The original outcomes of palatalization must have continued to be phonetically palatalized even after they had developed into alveolar/postalveolar/etc. consonants. This is clear from French, where all originally palatalized consonants triggered the development of a following glide /j/ in certain circumstances (most visible in the endings -āre, -ātum/ātam). In some cases this /j/ came from a consonant palatalized by an adjoining consonant after the late loss of a separating vowel. For example, mansiōnātam > /masʲoˈnata/ > masʲˈnada/ > /masʲˈnʲæðə/ > early Old French maisnieḍe /maisˈniɛðə/ "household". Similarly, mediētātem > /mejeˈtate/ > /mejˈtade/ > /mejˈtæðe/ > early Old French meitieḍ /mejˈtʲɛθ/ > modern French moitié /mwaˈtje/ "half". In both cases, phonetic palatalization must have remained in primitive Old French at least through the time when unstressed intertonic vowels were lost (c. eighth century AD?), well after the fragmentation of the Romance languages. The effect of palatalization is indicated in the writing systems of almost all Romance languages, where the letters 〈c g〉 have the "hard" pronunciation [k ɡ] in most situations, but a "soft" pronunciation (e.g. French/Portuguese [s ʒ], Italian/Romanian [tʃ dʒ]) before 〈e i y〉. (Because Middle English was originally written by scribes speaking Norman French, the English spelling system has the same peculiarity.) This has the effect of keeping the modern spelling similar to the original Latin spelling, but complicates the relationship between sound and letter. In particular, the hard sounds must be written differently before 〈e i y〉 (e.g. Italian 〈ch gh〉, Portuguese 〈qu gu〉), and likewise for the soft sounds when not before these letters (e.g. Italian 〈ci gi〉, Portuguese 〈ç j〉). Furthermore, in Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese, the use of 〈u〉 to signal the hard pronunciation before 〈e i y〉 means that a different spelling is also needed to signal the sounds /kw ɡw/ before these letters (Spanish 〈cu gü〉, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese 〈qü gü〉).[40] This produces a number of orthographic alternations in verbs whose pronunciation is entirely regular. The following are examples of corresponding first-person plural indicative and subjunctive in a number of regular Portuguese verbs: marcamos marquemos "we mark"; caçamos cacemos "we hunt"; chegamos cheguemos "we arrive"; averiguamos averigüemos "we verify"; adequamos adeqüemos "we adapt"; oferecemos ofereçamos "we offer"; dirigimos dirijamos "we drive" erguemos ergamos "we raise"; delinquimos delincamos "we commit a crime". Lenition Stop consonants shifted by lenition in Vulgar Latin. The voiced labial consonants /b/ and /w/ (represented by 〈b〉 and 〈v〉, respectively) both developed a fricative [β] as an intervocalic allophone.[41] This is clear from the orthography; in medieval times, the spelling of a consonantal 〈v〉 is often used for what had been a 〈b〉 in Classical Latin, or the two spellings were used interchangeably. In many Romance languages (Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.), this fricative later developed into a /v/; but in others (Spanish, Galician, some Catalan and Occitan dialects, etc.) reflexes of /b/ and /w/ simply merged into a single phoneme. Several other consonants were "softened" in intervocalic position in Western Romance (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Northern Italian), but normally not phonemically in the rest of Italy (except some cases of "elegant" or Ecclesiastical words), nor apparently at all in Romanian. The dividing line between the two sets of dialects is called the La Spezia–Rimini Line and is one of the most important isoglosses of the Romance dialects. The changes (instances of diachronic lenition) are as follows: Single voiceless plosives became voiced: -p-, -t-, -c- > -b-, -d-, -g-. Subsequently, in some languages they were further weakened, either becoming fricatives or approximants, [β̞], [ð̞], [ɣ˕] (as in Spanish) or disappearing entirely (as /t/ and /k/, but not /p/, in French). The following example shows progressive weakening of original /t/: e.g. vītam > Italian vita [ˈvita], Portuguese vida [ˈvidɐ] (European Portuguese [ˈviðɐ]), Spanish vida [ˈbiða], French vie [vi]. These sound changes may be due in part to the influence of Continental Celtic languages. The voiced plosives /d/ and /ɡ/ tended to disappear. The plain sibilant -s- [s] was also voiced to [z] between vowels, although in many languages its spelling has not changed. (In Spanish, intervocalic [z] was later devoiced back to [s]; [z] is only found as an allophone of /s/ before voiced consonants in Modern Spanish.) The double plosives became single: -pp-, -tt-, -cc-, -bb-, -dd-, -gg- > -p-, -t-, -c-, -b-, -d-, -g- in most languages. In French spelling, double consonants are merely etymological, except for -ll- after -i (pronounced [ij]), in most cases. The double sibilant -ss- [sː] also became phonetically single [s], although in many languages its spelling has not changed. Consonant length is no longer phonemically distinctive in most Romance languages. However some languages of Italy (Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, and numerous other varieties of central and southern Italy) do have long consonants like /ɡɡ/, /dd/, /bb/, /kk/, /tt/, /pp/, /ll/, /mm/, /nn/, /ss/, and to a lesser extent /rr/, etc., where the doubling indicates a short hold before the consonant is released, in many cases with distinctive lexical value: e.g. note /ˈnɔ.te/ (notes) vs. notte /ˈnɔt.te/ (night), cade /ˈka.de/ (s/he, it falls) vs. cadde /ˈkad.de/ (s/he, it fell). They may even occur at the beginning of words in Romanesco, Neapolitan and Sicilian, and are occasionally indicated in writing, e.g. Sicilian cchiù (more), and ccà (here). In general, the consonants /b/, /ts/, and /dz/ are long at the start of a word, while the archiphoneme |R| is realised as a trill /r/ in the same position. A few languages have regained secondary geminate consonants. The double consonants of Piedmontese exist only after stressed /ə/, written ë, and are not etymological: vëdde (Latin vidēre, to see), sëcca (Latin sicca, dry, feminine of sech). In standard Catalan and Occitan, there exists a geminate sound /lː/ written ŀl (Catalan) or ll (Occitan), but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech in both languages. Prosthesis In Western Romance, an epenthetic or prosthetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with /s/ and another consonant: spatha "sword" > Spanish/Portuguese espada, Catalan espasa, Old French espeḍe > modern épée; Stephanum "Stephen" > Spanish Esteban, Catalan Esteve, Portuguese Estêvão, Old French Estievne > modern Étienne; status "state" > Spanish/Portuguese estado, Catalan estat, Old French estat > modern état; spiritus "spirit" > Spanish espíritu, Portuguese espírito, Catalan esperit, French esprit. Epenthetic /e/ in Western Romance languages was also probably influenced by Continental Celtic languages. While Western Romance words undergo word-initial epenthesis, cognates in Italian do not: spatha > spada, Stephanum > Stefano, status > stato, spiritus > spirito. In Italian, syllabification rules were preserved instead by vowel-final articles, thus feminine spada as la spada, but instead of rendering the masculine *il spaghetto, lo spaghetto came to be the norm. Though receding at present, Italian once had an epenthetic /i/ if a consonant preceded such clusters, so that 'in Switzerland' was in /i/Svizzera. Some speakers still use the prosthetic /i/, and it is fossilized in a few set phrases as per iscritto 'in writing' (although in this case it has probably survived due to the influence of the separate word iscritto < Latin īnscrīptus). Stressed vowels Loss of vowel length, reorientation Evolution of the stressed vowels in early Romance Classical Proto- Romance Western Romance Balkan Romance Sardinian Sicilian Acad.1 Roman IPA Acad.1 IPA IPA ī long i /iː/ /i/ [i(ː)] i /i/ /i/ /i/ ȳ long y /yː/ i (ĭ) short i /i/ [ɪ] /ɪ/ [ɪ(ː)] ẹ /e/ y (y̆) short y /y/ ē long e /eː/ /e/ [e(ː)] /e/ œ oe /oj/ > /eː/ e (ĕ) short e /e/ [ɛ] /ɛ/ [ɛ(ː)] ę /ɛ/ /ɛ/ æ ae /aj/ > [ɛː] ā long a /aː/ /a/ [a(ː)] a /a/ a (ă) short a /a/ o (ŏ) short o /o/ [ɔ] /ɔ/ [ɔ(ː)] ǫ /ɔ/ /o/ /ɔ/ ō long o /oː/ /o/ [o(ː)] ọ /o/ /u/ au (a few words) au /aw/ > /oː/ u (ŭ) short u /u/ [ʊ] /ʊ/ [ʊ(ː)] /u/ ū long u /uː/ /u/ [u(ː)] u /u/ au (most words) au /aw/ au /aw/ 1 Traditional academic transcription in Latin and Romance studies, respectively. One profound change that affected Vulgar Latin was the reorganisation of its vowel system. Classical Latin had five short vowels, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, and five long vowels, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, each of which was an individual phoneme (see the table in the right, for their likely pronunciation in IPA), and four diphthongs, ae, oe, au and eu (five according to some authors, including ui). There were also long and short versions of y, representing the rounded vowel /y(ː)/ in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced /i(ː)/ even before Romance vowel changes started. There is evidence that in the imperial period all the short vowels except a differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts.[42] So, for example ē was pronounced close-mid /eː/ while ĕ was pronounced open-mid /ɛ/, and ī was pronounced close /iː/ while ĭ was pronounced near-close /ɪ/. During the Proto-Romance period, phonemic length distinctions were lost. Vowels came to be automatically pronounced long in stressed, open syllables (i.e. when followed by only one consonant), and pronounced short everywhere else. This situation is still maintained in modern Italian: cade [ˈkaːde] "he falls" vs. cadde [ˈkadde] "he fell". The Proto-Romance loss of phonemic length originally produced a system with nine different quality distinctions in monophthongs, where only original /ă ā/ had merged. Soon, however, many of these vowels coalesced: The simplest outcome was in Sardinian,[43] where the former long and short vowels in Latin simply coalesced, e.g. /ĕ ē/ > /e/, /ĭ ī/ > /i/: This produced a simple five-vowel system /a e i o u/. In most areas, however (technically, the Italo-Western languages), the near-close vowels /ɪ ʊ/ lowered and merged into the high-mid vowels /e o/. As a result, Latin pira "pear" and vēra "true", came to rhyme (e.g. Italian and Spanish pera, vera, and Old French poire, voire). Similarly, Latin nucem (from nux "nut") and vōcem (from vōx "voice") become Italian noce, voce, Portuguese noz, voz, and French noix, voix. This produced a seven-vowel system /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/, still maintained in conservative languages such as Italian and Portuguese, and lightly transformed in Spanish (where /ɛ/ > /je/, /ɔ/ > /we/). In the Eastern Romance languages (particularly, Romanian), the front vowels /ĕ ē ĭ ī/ evolved as in the majority of languages, but the back vowels /ŏ ō ŭ ū/ evolved as in Sardinian. This produced an unbalanced six-vowel system: /a ɛ e i o u/. In modern Romanian, this system has been significantly transformed, with /ɛ/ > /je/ and with new vowels /ə ɨ/ evolving, leading to a balanced seven-vowel system with central as well as front and back vowels: /a e i ə ɨ o u/. Sicilian is sometimes described as having its own distinct vowel system. In fact, Sicilian passed through the same developments as the main bulk of Italo-Western languages. Subsequently, however, high-mid vowels (but not low-mid vowels) were raised in all syllables, stressed and unstressed; i.e. /e o/ > /i u/. The result is a five-vowel /a ɛ i ɔ u/. The Proto-Romance allophonic vowel-length system was rephonemicized in the Gallo-Romance languages as a result of the loss of many final vowels. Some northern Italian languages (e.g. Friulan) still maintain this secondary phonemic length, but most languages dropped it by either diphthongizing or shortening the new long vowels. French phonemicized a third vowel length system around AD 1300 as a result of the sound change /VsC/ > /VhC/ > /VːC/ (where V is any vowel and C any consonant). This vowel length was eventually lost by around AD 1700, but the former long vowels are still marked with a circumflex. A fourth vowel length system, still non-phonemic, has now arisen: All nasal vowels as well as the oral vowels /ɑ o ø/ (which mostly derive from former long vowels) are pronounced long in all stressed closed syllables, and all vowels are pronounced long in syllables closed by the voiced fricatives /v z ʒ ʁ vʁ/. This system in turn has been phonemicized in some non-standard dialects (e.g. Haitian Creole), as a result of the loss of final /ʁ/. Latin diphthongs The Latin diphthongs ae and oe, pronounced /ai/ and /oi/ in earlier Latin, were early on monophthongized. ae became /ɛː/ by the a.d. 1st century at the latest. Although this sound was still distinct from all existing vowels, the neutralization of Latin vowel length eventually caused its merger with /ɛ/ < short e: e.g. caelum "sky" > French ciel, Spanish/Italian cielo, Portuguese céu /sɛw/, with the same vowel as in mele "honey" > French/Spanish miel, Italian miele, Portuguese mel /mɛl/. Some words show an early merger of ae with /eː/, as in praeda "booty" > Gallo-Romance /preːða/ > Old French preie (vs. expected **priée) > French proie "prey"; or faenum "hay" > fēnum [feːnu] > Spanish heno, French foin. oe generally merged with /eː/: poenam "punishment" > Romance */péna/ > Spanish/Italian pena, French peine; foedus "ugly" > Romance */fédo/ > Spanish feo, Portuguese feio. There are relatively few such outcomes, since oe was rare in Classical Latin (most original instances had become Classical ū, as in Old Latin oinos "one" > Classical ūnus[44]). au merged with ō [o] in the popular speech of Rome already by the 1st century b.c. A number of authors remarked on this explicitly, e.g. Cicero's taunt that the populist politician Publius Clodius Pulcher had changed his name from Claudius to ingratiate himself with the masses. This change never penetrated far from Rome, however, and the pronunciation /au/ was maintained for centuries in the vast majority of Latin-speaking areas, although it eventually developed into some variety of o in many languages. For example, Italian and French have /ɔ/ as the usual reflex, but this post-dates diphthongization of ɔ and the French-specific palatalization /ka/ > /tʃa/ (hence causa > French chose, Italian cosa /kɔza/ not *cuosa). Spanish has /o/, but Portuguese spelling maintains 〈ou〉, only recently developed to /o/ (and still /ou/ in some dialects). Occitan, Romanian, southern Italian languages, and many other minority Romance languages still have /au/. A few common words, however, show an early merger with ō [o], evidently reflecting a generalization of the popular Roman pronunciation: e.g. French queue, Italian coda /koda/, Occitan co(d)a, Romanian coadă (all meaning "tail") must all derive from cōda rather than Classical cauda.[45] Similarly, Portuguese orelha, Romanian ureche, and Sardinian olícra, orícla "ear" must derive from oricla rather than Classical auris, and the form oricla is in fact reflected in the Appendix Probi (but Occitan aurelha reflects auricla, probably influenced by ausir "to hear"). Further developments Metaphony Main article: Metaphony (Romance languages) An early process that operated in all Romance languages to varying degrees was metaphony (vowel mutation), conceptually similar to the umlaut process so characteristic of the Germanic languages. Depending on the language, certain stressed vowels were raised (or sometimes diphthongized) either by a final /i/ or /u/ or by a directly following /j/. Metaphony is most extensive in the Italo-Romance languages, and applies to nearly all languages in Italy; however, it is absent from Tuscan, and hence from standard Italian. In many languages affected by metaphony, a distinction exists between final /u/ (from most cases of Latin -um) and final /o/ (from Latin -ō, -ud and some cases of -um, esp. masculine "mass" nouns), and only the former triggers metaphony. Some examples: In Servigliano, in the Marches of Italy, stressed /ɛ e ɔ o/ are raised to /e i o u/ before final /i/ or /u/:[46] /ˈmetto/ "I put" vs. /ˈmitti/ "you put" (< *metti < *mettes < Latin mittis); /moˈdɛsta/ "modest (fem.)" vs. /moˈdestu/ "modest (masc.)"; /ˈkwesto/ "this (neut.)" (< Latin eccum istud) vs. /ˈkwistu/ "this (masc.)" (< Latin eccum istum). Calvallo, in the Basilicata region of southern Italy, is similar, but the low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ are diphthongized to /je wo/ rather than raised:[47] /ˈmette/ "he puts" vs. /ˈmitti/ "you put", but /ˈpɛnʒo/ "I think" vs. /ˈpjenʒi/ "you think". Metaphony also occurs in most northern Italian dialects, but only by (usually lost) final *i; apparently, final *u was lowered to *o (usually lost) before metaphony could take effect. Some of the Astur-Leonese dialects, in northern Spain, have the same distinction between final /o/ and /u/ as in the Central-Southern Italian languages, with /u/ triggering metaphony.[48] The plural of masculine nouns in these dialects ends in -os, which does not trigger metaphony, unlike in the singular (vs. Italian plural -i, which does trigger metaphony). Sardinian has allophonic raising of mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ to [e o] before final /i/ or /u/. This has been phonemicized in the Campidanese dialect as a result of the raising of final /e o/ to /i u/. Raising of /ɔ/ to /o/ occurs sporadically in Portuguese in the masculine singular, e.g. porco /ˈporku/ "pig" vs. porcos /ˈpɔrkus/ "pig". It is thought that Old Portuguese at one point had singular /u/ vs. plural /os/, exactly as in modern Astur-Leonese.[48] In all of the Western Romance languages, final /i/ (primarily occurring in the first-person singular of the preterite) raised mid-high /e o/ to /i u/, e.g. Portuguese fiz "I did" (< *fidzi < *fedzi < Latin fēcī) vs. fez "he did" (< *fedze < Latin fēcit). Old Spanish similarly had fize "I did" vs. fezo "he did" (-o by analogy with amó "he loved"), but subsequently generalized stressed /i/, producing modern hice "I did" vs. hizo "he did". The same thing happened prehistorically in Old French, yielding fis "I did", fist "he did" (< *feist < Latin fēcit). Diphthongization A number of languages diphthongized some of the free vowels, especially the low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/: Spanish consistently diphthongized all low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ > /je we/ except for before certain palatal consonants (which raised the vowels to high-mid before diphthongization took place). Romanian similarly diphthongized /ɛ/ to /je/ (the corresponding vowel /ɔ/ did not develop from Proto-Romance). Italian diphthongized /ɛ/ > /jɛ/ and /ɔ/ > /wɔ/ in open syllables (in the situations where vowels were lengthened in Proto-Romance). French similarly diphthongized /ɛ ɔ/ in open syllables (when lengthened), along with /a e o/: /aː ɛː eː ɔː oː/ > /aɛ iɛ ei uɔ ou/ > middle OF /e je ɔi we eu/ > modern /e je wa œ ~ ø œ ~ ø/. French also diphthongized /ɛ ɔ/ before palatalized consonants, especially /j/. Further development was as follows: /ɛj/ > /iej/ > /i/; /ɔj/ > /uoj/ > early OF /uj/ > modern /ɥi/. Catalan diphthongized /ɛ ɔ/ before /j/ from palatalized consonants, just like French, with similar results: /ɛj/ > /i/, /ɔj/ > /uj/. These diphthongizations had the effect of reducing or eliminating the distinctions between low-mid and high-mid vowels in many languages. In Spanish and Romanian, all low-mid vowels were diphthongized, and the distinction disappeared entirely. Portuguese is the most conservative in this respect, keeping the seven-vowel system more or less unchanged (but with changes in particular circumstances, e.g. due to metaphony). Other than before palatalized consonants, Catalan keeps /ɔ o/ intact, but /ɛ e/ split in a complex fashion into /ɛ e ə/ and then coalesced again in the standard dialect (Eastern Catalan) in such a way that most original /ɛ e/ have reversed their quality to become /e ɛ/. In French and Italian, the distinction between low-mid and high-mid vowels occurred only in closed syllables. Standard Italian more or less maintains this. In French, /e/ and /ɛ/ merged by the twelfth century or so, and the distinction between /ɔ/ and /o/ was eliminated without merging by the sound changes /u/ > /y/, /o/ > /u/. Generally this led to a situation where both [e,o] and [ɛ,ɔ] occur allophonically, with the high-mid vowels in open syllables and the low-mid vowels in closed syllables. This is still the situation in modern Spanish, for example. In French, however, both [e/ɛ] and [o/ɔ] were partly rephonemicized: Both /e/ and /ɛ/ occur in open syllables as a result of /aj/ > /ɛ/, and both /o/ and /ɔ/ occur in closed syllables as a result of /al/ > /au/ > /o/. Old French also had numerous falling diphthongs resulting from diphthongization before palatal consonants or from a fronted /j/ originally following palatal consonants in Proto-Romance or later: e.g. pācem /paʦe/ "peace" > PWR */paʣe/ (lenition) > OF paiz /pajʦ/; *punctum "point" > Gallo-Romance */ponʲto/ > */pojɲto/ (fronting) > OF point /põjnt/. During the Old French period, preconsonantal /l/ [ɫ] vocalized to /w/, producing many new falling diphthongs: e.g. dulcem "sweet" > PWR */doɫʦe/ > OF dolz /duɫʦ/ > douz /duʦ/; fallet "fails, is deficient" > OF falt > faut "is needed"; bellus "beautiful" > OF bels [bɛɫs] > beaus [bɛaws]. By the end of the Middle French period, all falling diphthongs either monophthongized or switched to rising diphthongs: proto OF /aj ɛj jɛj ej jej wɔj oj uj al ɛl el il ɔl ol ul/ > early OF /aj ɛj i ej yj oj yj aw ɛaw ew i ɔw ow y/ > modern spelling 〈ai ei i oi ui oi ui au eau eu i ou ou u〉 > mod. French /ɛ ɛ i wa ɥi wa ɥi o o ø i u u y/. Nasalization In both French and Portuguese, nasal vowels eventually developed from sequences of a vowel followed by a nasal consonant (/m/ or /n/). Originally, all vowels in both languages were nasalized before any nasal consonants, and nasal consonants not immediately followed by a vowel were eventually dropped. In French, nasal vowels before remaining nasal consonants were subsequently denasalized, but not before causing the vowels to lower somewhat, e.g. dōnat "he gives" > OF dune /dunə/ > donne /dɔn/, fēminam > femme /fam/. Other vowels remained diphthongized, and were dramatically lowered: fīnem "end" > fin /fɛ̃/ (often pronounced [fæ̃]); linguam "tongue" > langue /lɑ̃ɡ/; ūnum "one" > un /œ̃/, /ɛ̃/. In Portuguese, /n/ between vowels was dropped, and the resulting hiatus eliminated through vowel contraction of various sorts, often producing diphthongs: manum, *manōs > PWR *manu, ˈmanos "hand(s)" > mão, mãos /mɐ̃w̃, mɐ̃w̃s/; canem, canēs "dog(s)" > PWR *kane, ˈkanes > *can, ˈcanes > cão, cães /kɐ̃w̃, kɐ̃j̃s/; ratiōnem, ratiōnēs "reason(s)" > PWR *raˈdʲzʲone, raˈdʲzʲones > *raˈdzon, raˈdzones > razão, razões /χaˈzɐ̃w̃, χaˈzõj̃s/ (Brazil), /ʁaˈzɐ̃ũ, ʁɐˈzõj̃s/ (Portugal). Sometimes the nasalization was eliminated: lūna "moon" > Old Portuguese lũa > lua; vēna "vein" > Old Portuguese vẽa > veia. Nasal vowels that remained actually tend to be raised (rather than lowered, as in French): fīnem "end" > fim /fĩ/; centum "hundred" > PWR tʲsʲɛnto > cento /ˈsẽtu/; pontem "bridge" > PWR pɔnte > ponte /ˈpõtʃi/ (Brazil), /ˈpõtɨ/ (Portugal). In Portugal, vowels before a nasal consonant have become denasalized, but in Brazil they remain heavily nasalized. Front-rounded vowels Characteristic of the Gallo-Romance languages and Rhaeto-Romance languages are the front rounded vowels /y ø œ/. All of these languages show an unconditional change /u/ > /y/, e.g. lūnam > French lune /lyn/, Occitan /ˈlyno/. Many of the languages in Switzerland and Italy show the further change /y/ > /i/. Also very common is some variation of the French development /ɔː oː/ (lengthened in open syllables) > /we ew/ > /œ œ/, with mid back vowels diphthongizing in some circumstances and then re-monophthongizing into mid-front rounded vowels. (French has both /ø/ and /œ/, with /ø/ developing from /œ/ in certain circumstances.) Unstressed vowels Evolution of unstressed vowels in early Italo-Western Romance Latin Proto- Romance Stressed Non-final unstressed Final-unstressed Original Later Italo- Romance Later Western- Romance Gallo- Romance Primitive French IPA Acad.1 IPA a,ā /a/ a /a/ /a/ /ə/ e,ae /ɛ/ ę /ɛ/ /e/ /e/ /e/ ∅; /e/ (prop) ∅; /ə/ (prop) ē,oe /e/ ẹ /e/ i,y /ɪ/ ī,ȳ /i/ i /i/ /i/ o /ɔ/ ǫ /ɔ/ /o/ /o/ /o/ ō,(au) /o/ ọ /o/ u /ʊ/ /u/ ū /u/ u /u/ au (most words) /aw/ au /aw/ N/A 1 Traditional academic transcription in Romance studies. There was more variability in the result of the unstressed vowels. Originally in Proto-Romance, the same nine vowels developed in unstressed as stressed syllables, and in Sardinian, they coalesced into the same five vowels in the same way. In Italo-Western Romance, however, vowels in unstressed syllables were significantly different from stressed vowels, with yet a third outcome for final unstressed syllables. In non-final unstressed syllables, the seven-vowel system of stressed syllables developed, but then the low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ merged into the high-mid vowels /e o/. This system is still preserved, largely or completely, in all of the conservative Romance languages (e.g. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan). In final unstressed syllables, results were somewhat complex. One of the more difficult issues is the development of final short -u, which appears to have been raised to /u/ rather than lowered to /o/, as happened in all other syllables. However, it is possible that in reality, final /u/ comes from long *-ū < -um, where original final -m caused vowel lengthening as well as nasalization. Evidence of this comes from Rhaeto-Romance, in particular Sursilvan, which preserves reflexes of both final -us and -um, and where the latter, but not the former, triggers metaphony. This suggests the development -us > /ʊs/ > /os/, but -um > /ũː/ > /u/.[49] Examples of evolution of final unstressed vowels: From least- to most-changed languages English Latin Proto-Italo-Western1 Conservative Central Italian1 Italian Spanish Catalan Old French a, e, i, o, u a, e, i, o, u a, e, i, o a, e/-, o a, -/e e, -/e one (fem.) ūnam ˈuna una una una una une door portam ˈpɔrta pɔrta porta puerta porta porte seven septem ˈsɛtte sɛtte sette siete set set sea mare ˈmare mare mare mar mar mer peace pācem ˈpatʃe pace pace paz pau paiz part partem ˈparte parte parte parte part part mother mātrem ˈmatre matre madre madre mare meḍre twenty vīgintī veˈenti vinti venti veinte vint vint four quattuor ˈkwattro quattro quattro cuatro quatre quatre eight octō ˈɔkto ɔtto otto ocho vuit huit when quandō ˈkwando quando quando cuando quan quant fourth quartum ˈkwartu quartu quarto cuarto quart quart one (masc.) ūnum ˈunu unu uno uno un un port portum ˈpɔrtu portu porto puerto port port 1 These columns use IPA symbols /ɔ, ɛ/ to indicate open-mid vowels. The original five-vowel system in final unstressed syllables was preserved as-is in some of the more conservative central Italian languages, but in most languages there was further coalescence: In Tuscan (including standard Italian), final /u/ merged into /o/. In the Western Romance languages, final /i/ eventually merged into /e/ (although final /i/ triggered metaphony before that, e.g. Spanish hice, Portuguese fiz "I did" < *fize < Latin fēcī). Conservative languages like Spanish largely maintain that system, but drop final /e/ after certain single consonants, e.g. /r/, /l/, /n/, /d/, /z/ (< palatalized c). In the Gallo-Romance languages (part of Western Romance), final /o/ and /e/ were dropped entirely unless that produced an impossible final cluster (e.g. /tr/), in which case a "prop vowel" /e/ was added. This left only two final vowels: /a/ and prop vowel /e/. Catalan preserves this system. Loss of final stressless vowels in Venetian shows a pattern intermediate between Central Italian and the Gallo-Italic branch, and the environments for vowel deletion vary considerably depending on the dialect. In table above final /e/ is uniformly absent in mar, absent in some dialects in part(e) /part(e)/ and set(e) /sɛt(e)/, but retained in mare (< Latin mātrem) as a relic of the earlier cluster *dr. In primitive Old French (one of the Gallo-Romance languages), these two remaining vowels merged into /ə/. Various later changes happened in individual languages, e.g.: In French, most final consonants were dropped, and then final /ə/ was also dropped. The /ə/ is still preserved in spelling as a final silent -e, whose main purpose is to signal that the previous consonant is pronounced, e.g. port "port" /pɔʁ/ vs. porte "door" /pɔʁt/. These changes also eliminated the difference between singular and plural in most words: ports "ports" (still /pɔʁ/), portes "doors" (still /pɔʁt/). Final consonants reappear in liaison contexts (in close connection with a following vowel-initial word), e.g. nous /nu/ "we" vs. nous avons /nuz-aˈvɔ̃/ "we have", il fait /il fɛ/ "he does" vs. fait-il?" /fɛt-il/ "does he?". In Portuguese, final unstressed /o/ and /u/ were apparently preserved intact for a while, since final unstressed /u/, but not /o/ or /os/, triggered metaphony (see above). Final-syllable unstressed /o/ was raised in preliterary times to /u/, but always still written 〈o〉. At some point (perhaps in late Old Portuguese), final-syllable unstressed /e/ was raised to /i/ (but still written 〈e〉); this remains in Brazilian Portuguese, but has developed to /ɨ/ in European Portuguese. In Catalan, final unstressed /as/ > /es/. In many dialects, unstressed /o/ and /u/ merge into /u/ as in Portuguese, and unstressed /a/ and /e/ merge into /ə/. However, some dialects preserve the original five-vowel system, most notably standard Valencian. Intertonic vowels The so-called intertonic vowels are word-internal unstressed vowels, i.e. not in the initial, final, or tonic (i.e. stressed) syllable, hence intertonic. Intertonic vowels were the most subject to loss or modification. Already in Vulgar Latin intertonic vowels between a single consonant and a following /r/ or /l/ tended to drop: vétulum "old" > veclum > Dalmatian vieklo, Sicilian vecchiu, Portuguese velho. But many languages ultimately dropped almost all intertonic vowels. Generally, those languages south and east of the La Spezia–Rimini Line (Romanian and Central-Southern Italian) maintained intertonic vowels, while those to the north and west (Western Romance) dropped all except /a/. Standard Italian generally maintained intertonic vowels, but typically raised unstressed /e/ > /i/. Examples: septimā́nam "week" > Italian settimana, Romanian săptămână vs. Spanish/Portuguese semana, French semaine, Occitan/Catalan setmana, Piedmontese sman-a quattuórdecim "fourteen" > Italian quattordici, Venetian cuatòrdexe, Lombard/Piedmontese quatòrdes, vs. Spanish catorce, Portuguese/French quatorze metipsissimus[50] > medipsimus /medíssimos/ ~ /medéssimos/ "self"[51] > Italian medésimo vs. Venetian medemo, Lombard medemm, Old Spanish meísmo, meesmo (> modern mismo), Old Portuguese meesmo (> modern mesmo), Old French meḍisme (> later meïsme > MF mesme > modern même)[52] bonitā́tem "goodness" > Italian bonità ~ bontà, Romanian bunătate but Spanish bondad, Portuguese bondade, French bonté collocā́re "to position, arrange" > Italian coricare vs. Spanish colgar "to hang", Romanian culca "to lie down", French coucher "to lay sth on its side; put s.o. to bed" commūnicā́re "to take communion" > Romanian cumineca vs. Portuguese comungar, Spanish comulgar, Old French comungier carricā́re "to load (onto a wagon, cart)" > Portuguese/Catalan carregar vs. Spanish/Occitan cargar "to load", French charger, Lombard cargà/caregà, Venetian carigar/cargar(e) "to load" fábricam "forge" > /*fawrɡa/ > Spanish fragua, Portuguese frágua, Occitan/Catalan farga, French forge disjējūnā́re "to break a fast" > *disjūnā́re > Old French disner "to have lunch" > French dîner "to dine" (but *disjū́nat > Old French desjune "he has lunch" > French (il) déjeune "he has lunch") adjūtā́re "to help" > Italian aiutare, Romanian ajuta but French aider, Lombard aidà/aiuttà (Spanish ayudar, Portuguese ajudar based on stressed forms, e.g. ayuda/ajuda "he helps"; cf. Old French aidier "to help" vs. aiue "he helps") Portuguese is more conservative in maintaining some intertonic vowels other than /a/: e.g. *offerḗscere "to offer" > Portuguese oferecer vs. Spanish ofrecer, French offrir (< *offerīre). French, on the other hand, drops even intertonic /a/ after the stress: Stéphanum "Stephen" > Spanish Esteban but Old French Estievne > French Étienne. Many cases of /a/ before the stress also ultimately dropped in French: sacraméntum "sacrament" > Old French sairement > French serment "oath". Writing systems Main article: Latin script The Romance languages for the most part have kept the writing system of Latin, adapting it to their evolution. One exception was Romanian before the nineteenth century, where, after the Roman retreat, literacy was reintroduced through the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, a Slavic influence. A Cyrillic alphabet was also used for Romanian (Moldovan) in the USSR. The non-Christian populations of Spain also used the scripts of their religions (Arabic and Hebrew) to write Romance languages such as Ladino and Mozarabic in aljamiado. Letters Spelling of results of palatalization and related sounds Sound Spanish Portuguese French Italian Romanian /k/, not + 〈e, i, y〉 〈c〉 palatalized /k/ (/tʃ/~/s/~/θ/), + 〈e, i, y〉 〈c〉 palatalized /k/ (/tʃ/~/s/~/θ/), not + 〈e, i, y〉 〈z〉 〈ç〉 〈ci〉 /kw/, not + 〈e, i, y〉 〈cu〉 〈qu〉 — /k/ + 〈e, i〉 (inherited) 〈qu〉 〈ch〉 /kw/ + 〈e, i〉 (learned) 〈cu〉 〈qu〉[53] — /g/, not + 〈e, i, y〉 〈g〉 palatalized /k, g/ (/dʒ/~/ʒ/~/x/), + 〈e, i, y〉 〈g〉 palatalized /k, g/ (/dʒ/~/ʒ/~/x/), not + 〈e, i, y〉 〈j〉 〈g(e)〉 〈gi〉 /gw/, not + 〈e ,i〉 〈gu〉 /g/ + 〈e, i〉 (inherited) 〈gu〉 〈gh〉 /gw/ + 〈e, i〉 (learned) 〈gü〉 〈gu〉[54] (former) /ʎ/ 〈ll〉 〈lh〉 〈il(l)〉 〈gli〉 — /ɲ/ 〈ñ〉 〈nh〉 〈gn〉 — The Romance languages are written with the classical Latin alphabet of 23 letters – A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Y, Z – subsequently modified and augmented in various ways. In particular, the single Latin letter V split into V (consonant) and U (vowel), and the letter I split into I and J. The Latin letter K and the new letter W, which came to be widely used in Germanic languages, are seldom used in most Romance languages – mostly for unassimilated foreign names and words. Indeed in Italian prose *kilometro is properly chilometro. Catalan eschews importation of "foreign" letters more than most languages. Thus Wikipedia becomes Viquipèdia in Catalan but remains Wikipedia in Spanish. While most of the 23 basic Latin letters have maintained their phonetic value, for some of them it has diverged considerably; and the new letters added since the Middle Ages have been put to different uses in different scripts. Some letters, notably H and Q, have been variously combined in digraphs or trigraphs (see below) to represent phonetic phenomena that could not be recorded with the basic Latin alphabet, or to get around previously established spelling conventions. Most languages added auxiliary marks (diacritics) to some letters, for these and other purposes. The spelling rules of most Romance languages are fairly simple, but subject to considerable regional variation. The letters with most conspicuous phonetic variations, between Romance languages or with respect to Latin, are: B, V: Merged in Spanish and most dialects of Catalan, where both letters are pronounced as either [b] or [β] (similar to v) depending on position, with no relationship between sound and spelling. C: Generally a "hard" [k], but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before e, i, or y. G: Generally a "hard" [ɡ], but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before e, i, or y. In some languages, like Spanish, the hard g is pronounced as a fricative [ɣ] after vowels. In Romansch, the soft g is a voiced palatal plosive [ɟ] or a voiced alveolo-palatal affricate [dʑ]. H: Silent in most languages; used to form various digraphs. But represents [h] in Romanian, Walloon and Gascon Occitan. J: Represents a fricative in most languages, or the palatal approximant [j] in Romansh and in several of the languages of Italy. Italian does not use this letter in native words. Usually pronounced like the soft g (except in Romansch and the languages of Italy). |
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