Romance Languages

12/28/21, 11:28 AM Romance languages - Wikipedia
Romance languages
The Romance languages, less commonly Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the modern languages
Romance
that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the third and eighth centuries.[1] They are a subgroup of the Italic
languages in the Indo-European language family. The six most widely spoken Romance languages by Geographic
Originated in Old Latium,
number of native speakers are Spanish (489 million), Portuguese (250 million), French (77 million), Italian distribution Southern, Western and Eastern
(67 million), Romanian (24 million), and Catalan (4.1 million[2]). Italian is the closest national language to Europe; now also spoken in a
Latin, followed by Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, and the most divergent being French. Taking into vast majority of the American
account all the Romance languages, including national and regional languages, Sardinian and Italian are countries, in parts of Africa and
together the least differentiated from Latin, and Occitan is closer to Latin than French.[3][4][5] However, all in parts of Southeast Asia and
Romance languages are closer to each other than to classical Latin. Oceania
There are more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages found worldwide, mainly in the Linguistic Indo-European
Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa. The major Romance languages also have many non-native speakers classification
Italic
and are in widespread use as lingua franca.[6] This is especially true of French, which is in widespread use
throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Djibouti, Lebanon, and Romance
North Africa (excluding Egypt, where it is a minority language). Early form Vulgar Latin
Subdivisions Western Romance
Because it is difficult to assign rigid categories to phenomena such as languages, which exist on a
continuum, estimates of the number of modern Romance languages vary. For example, Dalby lists 23, based Italo-Dalmatian
on the criterion of mutual intelligibility. The following includes those and additional current, living Eastern Romance
languages, and one extinct language, Dalmatian:[7]
Sardinian
Ibero-Romance: Portuguese, Galician, Asturleonese/Mirandese, Spanish, Aragonese, Ladino (Judaeo- Pannonian †
Spanish); British †
Occitano-Romance: Catalan/Valencian, Occitan (lenga d'oc), Gascon;
African †
Gallo-Romance: French/Oïl languages, Franco-Provençal (Arpitan);
Rhaeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian; ISO 639-2 / 5 roa
Gallo-Italic: Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol; Linguasphere 51- (phylozone)
Italo-Dalmatian: Italian, Tuscan, Romanesco, Corsican, Sassarese, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Dalmatian Glottolog roma1334 (http://glottolo
(extinct in 1898), Venetian (classification disputed), Istriot; g.org/resource/languoid/i
Sardinian; d/roma1334)
Eastern Romance: Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian.
Contents
Name
Samples
Classification and related languages
Proposed divisions Official language
Italo-Western vs. Eastern vs. Sardinian Co-official or coexists with other languages
Dialects of southern Italy, Sardinia and Corsica Cultural or secondary language
Gallo-Romance languages
Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages
Auxiliary and constructed languages
Modern status
History
Vulgar Latin
Fall of the Western Roman Empire
Fall of the Eastern Roman empire
Early Romance
Recognition of the vernaculars
Uniformization and standardization European Romance languages
Sound changes
Consonants
Apocope
Palatalization
Lenition
Vowel prosthesis
Stressed vowels
Loss of vowel length, reorientation
Latin diphthongs
Further developments
Metaphony
Diphthongization
Nasalization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages 1/26
Front-rounded vowels
Unstressed vowels
Intertonic vowels
Writing systems
Letters
Digraphs and trigraphs
Double consonants
Diacritics
Upper and lower case
Vocabulary comparison
Degrees of lexical similarity among the Romance languages
See also
Notes
References
External links
Name
The term Romance derives from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, "in Roman", derived from romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui,
"to speak in Roman" (that is, the Latin vernacular), contrasted with latine loqui, "to speak in Latin" (Medieval Latin, the conservative version of the
language used in writing and formal contexts or as a lingua franca), and with barbarice loqui, "to speak in Barbarian" (the non-Latin languages of the
peoples living outside the Roman Empire).[8] From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, or "in
the Roman vernacular".[9]
Samples
Lexical and grammatical similarities among the Romance languages, and between Latin and each of them, are apparent from the following examples
having the same meaning in various Romance lects:
English She always closes the window before she dines/before dining.
Latin (Ea) semper antequam cenat fenestram claudit.
Illa/ipsa claudit semper illa fenestra antequa (later, only in Italy,
Vulgar Latin
prima) de cenare
Apulian (Jèdde) akjude sèmbe la fenèstre prime de mangè.
Aragonese (Ella) zarra siempre a finestra antes de cenar.
Aromanian (Ea/Nâsa) ãncljidi/nkidi totna firida/fireastra ninti di tsinã.
Asturian (Ella) pieslla siempres la ventana enantes de cenar.
Cantabrian (Ella) tranca siempri la ventana enantis de cenar.
Catalan (Ella) sempre tanca la finestra abans de sopar.
Northern Corsican Ella chjode/chjude sempre lu/u purtellu avanti/nanzu di cenà.
Southern Corsican Edda/Idda sarra/serra sempri u purteddu nanzu/prima di cinà.
Emilian (Reggiano) (Lē) la sèra sèmpar sù la fnèstra prima ad snàr.
Emilian (Bolognese) (Lî) la sèra sänper la fnèstra prémma ed dṡnèr.
Emilian (Piacenza Language (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetto_piacentino#c
Ad sira lé la sèra seimpar la finéstra prima da seina.
ite_note-Template_ISO_639-1))
Extremaduran (Ella) afecha siempri la ventana antis de cenal.
Franco-Provençal (Le) sarre toltin/tojor la fenétra avan de goutâ/dinar/sopar.
French Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper.
Friulian (Jê) e siere simpri il barcon prin di cenâ.
Galician (Ela) pecha/fecha sempre a fiestra/xanela antes de cear.
Gallurese Idda chjude sempri lu balconi primma di cinà.
(Ella/lei) chiude (archaic: serra) sempre la finestra prima (archaic:
Italian
avanti) di cenare.
Judaeo-Spanish .‫ ֵאילייה ֵסיּרה סֵײמּפֵר י לה ֵֿבינטאנה אנֵטיס ֵד י ֵסינאר‬Ella cerra siempre

la ventana antes de cenar.
Badiot: Ëra stlüj dagnora la finestra impröma de cenè.
Centro Cadore: La sera sempre la fenestra gnante de disna.
Ladin
Auronzo di Cadore: La sera sempro la fenestra davoi de disnà.
Gherdëina: Ëila stluj for l viere dan maië da cëina.

Leonese (Eilla) pecha siempre la ventana primeiru de cenare.
Ligurian (Le) a saera sempre u barcun primma de cenà.
Lombard (east.)
(Lé) la sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà.

(Bergamasque)
Lombard (west.) (Lee) la sara sù semper la finestra primma de disnà/scenà.
Magoua (Elle) à fàrm toujour là fnèt àvan k'à manj.
Mirandese (Eilha) cerra siempre la bentana/jinela atrás de jantar.
Neapolitan Essa 'nzerra sempe 'a fenesta primma 'e cenà.
Norman Lli barre tréjous la crouésie devaunt de daîner.
Occitan (Ela) barra/tanca sempre/totjorn la fenèstra abans de sopar.
Picard Ale frunme tojours l' creusèe édvint éd souper.
Piedmontese Chila a sara sèmper la fnestra dnans ëd fé sin-a/dnans ëd siné.
Portuguese (Ela) fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar/cear/comer.
Romagnol (Lia) la ciud sëmpra la fnèstra prëma ad magnè.
Romanian Ea închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina.
Romansh Ella clauda/serra adina la fanestra avant ch'ella tschainia.
South Sardinian (Campidanese) Issa serrat semp(i)ri sa bentana in antis de cenai
North Sardinian (Logudorese) Issa serrat semper sa bentana in antis de chenàre.
Sassarese Edda sarra sempri lu balchoni primma di zinà.
Sicilian Iḍḍa ncasa sempri a finesṭṛa prima ’i manciari â sira.
Spanish (Ella) siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar/comer.
Tuscan Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenà.
Umbrian Lia chiude sempre la finestra prima de cenà.
Venetian Eła ła sara/sera senpre ła fenestra vanti de diznar.
Walloon Ele sere todi li finiesse divant di soper.
Romance-based creoles and pidgins

Haitian Creole Li toujou fèmen fenèt la avan li mange.
Mauritian Creole Li pou touzour ferm lafnet la avan (li) manze.
Seychellois Creole Y pou touzour ferm lafnet aven y manze.
Papiamento E muhe semper ta sera e bentana promé ku e kome.
Kriolu Êl fechâ sempre janela antes de jantâ.
Chavacano Ta cerrá él siempre con la ventana antes de cená.
Palenquero Ele ta cerrá siempre ventana antes de cená.
Some of the divergence comes from semantic change: where the same root words have developed different meanings. For example, the Portuguese word
fresta is descended from Latin fenestra "window" (and is thus cognate to French fenêtre, Italian finestra, Romanian fereastră and so on), but now means
"skylight" and "slit". Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as finiestra in Spanish, or dropped out of use entirely. The Spanish and Portuguese
terms defenestrar meaning "to throw through a window" and fenestrado meaning "replete with windows" also have the same root, but are later
borrowings from Latin.
Likewise, Portuguese also has the word cear, a cognate of Italian cenare and Spanish cenar, but uses it in the sense of "to have a late supper" in most
varieties, while the preferred word for "to dine" is jantar (related to archaic Spanish yantar "to eat") because of semantic changes in the 19th century.
Galician has both fiestra (from medieval fẽestra, the ancestor of standard Portuguese fresta) and the less frequently used ventá and xanela.
As an alternative to lei (originally the genitive form), Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the other words for "she", but it is hardly ever used in
speaking.
Spanish, Asturian, and Leonese ventana and Mirandese and Sardinian bentana come from Latin ventus "wind" (cf. English window, etymologically 'wind
eye'), and Portuguese janela, Galician xanela, Mirandese jinela from Latin *ianuella "small opening", a derivative of ianua "door".
Sardinian balcone (alternative for ventàna/bentàna) comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon (from
Italian balcone), Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi (alternative for purtellu).
Classification and related languages

The classification of the Romance languages is inherently difficult, because most of the linguistic area is a dialect continuum, and in some cases political
biases can come into play. Along with Latin (which is not included among the Romance languages) and a few extinct languages of ancient Italy, they make
up the Italic branch of the Indo-European family.[10]
Latin
Ecclesiastical
Classical Latin Vulgar Latin
Latin
Continental Sardinian
Romance language
African Eastern
Italo-Western
Romance Romance
Western Proto-Italian Dalmatian Balkan

Romance Romance
Gallo- Proto-
Ibero-Romance Italian
Romance Romanian
Galician- Occitano-
Mozarabic Spanish French Gallo-Italic Romanian Aromanian
Portuguese Romance
Galician Portuguese Catalan Occitan
Proposed divisions
Extent of variation in development (very conservative to very innovative)
Form ("to Nuorese Languedocien Classical Milanese Bolognese

Latin Italian Spanish Portuguese Romanian French
sing") Sardinian Occitan Catalan 2 Lombard Emilian
cantar
cantar
cantare
cantare
cantar
cantar
cantar
a cânta
cantèr
chanter
Infinitive cantāre [kɐ̃ˈtaɾ]

[kənˈta]
[kanˈtare̞ ] [kanˈtaːre] [kanˈtar] [kanˈta] [kanˈta] [a kɨnˈta] [kaŋˈtɛːr] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]

[kɐ̃ˈtaχ] 1 [kanˈtaɾ]
cantado
cantado
cantat
Past cantatu
cantato
cantat
cantad
cântat
cantè
chanté
cantātum [kan [kɐ̃ˈtadu]

[kənˈtat]
participle [kanˈtatu] [kanˈtaːto] [kanˈtat] [kanˈtaː] [kɨnˈtat] [kaŋˈtɛː] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]

ˈtaðo̞ ] [kɐ̃ˈtadʊ] [kanˈtat]
cantando
cantando
cantando
cantant
cantande
cantant
cantand
cântând
cantànd
chantant
Gerund cantandum [kan [kan [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃du]

[kənˈtan]
[kanˈtande̞ ] [kanˈtan] [kanˈtant] [kɨnˈtɨnd] [kaŋˈtaŋd] [ʃɑ̃ˈtɑ̃]

ˈtando] ˈtando̞ ] [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃dʊ] [kanˈtant]
canto
cant
canto
canto
canto
cante
canti
cânt
a3 cant
chante
1sg indic cantō [ˈkɐ̃tu]

[ˈkan]
[ˈkanto̞ ] [ˈkanto] [ˈkanto̞ ] [ˈkante] [ˈkanti] [ˈkɨnt] [a ˈkaŋt] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

[ˈkɐ̃tʊ] [ˈkant]
cantas
cantes
cantas
canti
cantas
cantas
càntet
cânți
t cant
chantes
2sg indic cantās [ˈkɐ̃tɐʃ] [ˈkantəs]
[ˈkantaza] [ˈkanti] [ˈkantas] [ˈkantɔs] [ˈkantɛt] [ˈkɨntsʲ] [t ˈkaŋt] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

[ˈkɐ̃tɐs] [ˈkantes]
canta
cantat
canta
canta
canta
canta
canta
cântă
al canta
chante
3sg indic cantat [ˈkantə]
[ˈkantata] [ˈkanta] [ˈkanta] [ˈkɐ̃tɐ] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkɨntə] [al ˈkaŋtɐ] [ˈʃɑ̃t]
[ˈkanta]
cantiamo
cantamos
cantamos
cantam
cantom
cantamus
cantam
cântăm
a cantän
chantons
1pl indic cantāmus [kan [kan [kɐ̃ˈtɐmuʃ]

[kənˈtam]
[ˈkantum, kan
[kanˈtamuzu] [kanˈtam] [kɨnˈtəm] [a kaŋˈtɛ̃] [ʃɑ̃ˈtɔ̃]
ˈtjaːmo] ˈtamo̞ s] [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃mʊs] [kanˈtam] ˈtum]
cantais
cantau
cantates
cantate
cantáis
cantatz
cantev
cântați
a cantè
chantez
2pl indic cantātis [kɐ̃ˈtajʃ]

[kənˈtaw]
[kanˈtate̞ ze̞ ] [kanˈtaːte] [kanˈtajs] [kanˈtats] [kanˈteː(f)] [kɨnˈtatsʲ] [a kaŋˈtɛ:] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]

[kɐ̃ˈtajs] [kanˈtaw]
canten
canten/canta
cantant
cantano
cantan
cantam
cantan
cântă
i cànten
chantent
3pl indic cantant [ˈkantən]

[ˈkantɛn,
[ˈkantana] [ˈkantano] [ˈkantan] [ˈkɐ̃tɐ̃w̃] [ˈkantan] [ˈkɨntə] [i ˈkaŋtɐn] [ˈʃɑ̃t]
[ˈkanten] ˈkantɔ]
cante
cant
cante
canti
cante
cante
canta
cânt
a canta
chante
1sg sbjv cantem [ˈkɐ̃tɨ]

[ˈkan]
[ˈkante̞ ] [ˈkanti] [ˈkante̞ ] [ˈkante] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkɨnt] [a ˈkaŋtɐ] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

[ˈkɐ̃tᶴi] [ˈkant]
cantes
cantes
cantes
canti
cantes
cantes
càntet
cânți
t cant
chantes
2sg sbjv cantēs [ˈkɐ̃tɨʃ]

[ˈkantəs]
[ˈkante̞ ze̞ ] [ˈkanti] [ˈkante̞ s] [ˈkantes] [ˈkantɛt] [ˈkɨntsʲ] [t ˈkaŋt] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

[ˈkɐ̃tᶴis] [ˈkantes]
cante
cant
cantet
canti
cante
cante
canta
cânte
al canta
chante
3sg sbjv cantet [ˈkɐ̃tɨ]

[ˈkan]
[ˈkante̞ te̞ ] [ˈkanti] [ˈkante̞ ] [ˈkante] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkɨnte̞ ] [al ˈkaŋtɐ] [ˈʃɑ̃t]
[ˈkɐ̃tᶴi] [ˈkant]
cantem
cantiamo
cantemos
cantemos
cantom
a cantaggna
cantemus
cantem
[kənˈtəm]
cântăm
chantions
1pl sbjv cantēmus [kan [kan [kɐ̃ˈtemuʃ]

[ˈkantum, kan [a kɐn
[kanˈte̞ muzu] [kanˈtem] [kənˈtɛm]
[kɨnˈtəm] [ʃɑ̃ˈtjɔ̃]
ˈtjaːmo] ˈte̞ mo̞ s] [kɐ̃ˈtẽmʊs] ˈtum] ˈtaɲɲɐ]
[kanˈtem]
canteu
cantiate
canteis
cantetis
cantéis
cantetz
[kənˈtəw]
cantev
cântați
a cantèdi
chantiez
2pl sbjv cantētis [kan [kɐ̃ˈtejʃ]
[kanˈte̞ tizi] [kanˈte̞ js] [kanˈtets] [kənˈtɛw]

[kanˈteː(f)] [kɨnˈtatsʲ] [a kaŋˈtɛ:di] [ʃɑ̃ˈtje]
ˈtjaːte] [kɐ̃ˈtejs]
[kanˈtew]
canten
canten/canta
cantent
cantino
canten
cantem
canten
cânte
i cànten
chantent
3pl sbjv cantent [ˈkantən]

[ˈkantɛn,
[ˈkante̞ ne̞ ] [ˈkantino] [ˈkante̞ n] [ˈkɐ̃tẽj̃] [ˈkanten] [ˈkɨnte̞ ] [i ˈkaŋtɐn] [ˈʃɑ̃t]
[ˈkanten] ˈkantɔ]
canta
2sg canta
canta
canta
canta
canta
canta
cântă
canta
chante
cantā [ˈkantə]
imperative [ˈkanta] [ˈkanta] [ˈkanta] [ˈkɐ̃tɐ] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkɨntə] [ˈkaŋtɐ] [ˈʃɑ̃t]
[ˈkanta]
cantau
2pl cantate
cantate
cantad
cantai
cantatz
cantev
cântați
cantè
chantez
cantāte [kənˈtaw]
imperative [kanˈtate̞ ] [kanˈtaːte] [kanˈtað] [kɐ̃ˈtaj] [kanˈtats] [kanˈteːn(f)] [kɨnˈtatsʲ] [kaŋˈtɛ:] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]
[kanˈtaw]
1Also [ɾ̥ r̥ ɻ̝̊ x ħ h] are all possible allophones of [ɾ] in this position, as well as deletion of the consonant.
2Its conjugation model is based according to the classical model dating to the Middle Ages, rather than the modern conjugations used in Catalonia, the Valencian Community or the
Balearic Islands, which may differ accordingly.
3Conjugated verbs in Bolognese require an unstressed subject pronoun cliticized to the verb. Full forms may be used in addition, thus 'you (pl.) eat' can be a magnè or vuèter a
magnè, but bare *magnè is ungrammatical. Interrogatives require enclitics, which may not replicate proclitic forms: magnèv? 'are you (pl.) eating?/do you (pl.) eat?'.
There are various schemes used to subdivide the Romance languages. Three of the most common schemes
are as follows:
Italo-Western vs. Eastern vs. Southern. This is the scheme followed by Ethnologue, and is based
primarily on the outcome of the ten monophthong vowels in Classical Latin. This is discussed more
below.
West vs. East. This scheme divides the various languages along the La Spezia–Rimini Line, which runs
across north-central Italy just to the north of the city of Florence (whose speech forms the basis of
standard Italian). In this scheme, "East" includes the languages of central and southern Italy, and the
Balkan Romance (or "Eastern Romance") languages in Romania, Greece, and elsewhere in the Chart of Romance languages based on structural
Balkans; "West" includes the languages of Portugal, Spain, France, northern Italy and Switzerland.
and comparative criteria, not on socio-functional
Sardinian does not easily fit in this scheme.
ones. FP: Franco-Provençal, IR: Istro-Romanian.
"Conservative" vs. "innovatory". This is a non-genetic division whose precise boundaries are subject to
debate. Generally, the Gallo-Romance languages (discussed further below) form the core "innovatory"
languages, with standard French generally considered the most innovatory of all, while the languages near the periphery (which include Spanish,
Portuguese, Italian and Romanian) are "conservative". Sardinian is generally acknowledged the most conservative Romance language, and was also
the first language to split off genetically from the rest, possibly as early as the first century BC. Dante
famously denigrated the Sardinians for the conservativeness of their speech, remarking that they
imitate Latin "like monkeys imitate men".[11][12]
Italo-Western vs. Eastern vs. Sardinian
The main subfamilies that have been proposed by Ethnologue within the various classification schemes for
Romance languages are:
Italo-Western, the largest group, which includes languages such as Catalan, Portuguese, Italian,
Spanish, and French.
Eastern Romance, which includes the Romance languages of Eastern Europe, such as Romanian.
Southern Romance, which includes a few languages with particularly conservative features, such as Eastern and Western Romance areas split by the
Sardinian and, according to some authors, Corsican as well to a more limited extent. This family is La Spezia–Rimini Line
thought to have included the now-vanished Romance languages of North Africa (or at least, they
appear to have evolved some phonological features and their vowels in the same way).
This three-way division is made primarily based on the outcome of Vulgar Latin (Proto-Romance) vowels:
Outcome of Classical Latin vowels

Classical Latin Proto-Romance Southern Italo-Western Eastern
long I /iː/ /i/ /i/
/i/
short I /i/
/e/ /e/
long E /eː/
/e/
short E /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /ɛ/
Romance languages and dialects
short A /a/
/a/ /a/ /a/
long A /aː/
short O /ɔ/ /ɔ/
/o/ /o/
long O /oː/
/o/
short U /u/
/u/ /u/
long U /uː/ /u/
Italo-Western is in turn split along the so-called La Spezia–Rimini Line in northern Italy, which divides the central and southern Italian languages from
the so-called Western Romance languages to the north and west. The primary characteristics dividing the two are:
Phonemic lenition of intervocalic stops, which happens to the northwest but not to the southeast.
Degemination of geminate stops (producing new intervocalic single voiceless stops, after the old ones were lenited), which again happens to the
northwest but not to the southeast.
Deletion of intertonic vowels (between the stressed syllable and either the first or last syllable), again in the northwest but not the southeast.
Use of plurals in /s/ in the northwest vs. plurals using vowel change in the southeast.
Development of palatalized /k/ before /e,i/ to /(t)s/ in the northwest vs. /tʃ/ in the southeast.
Development of /kt/, which develops to /xt/ > /it/ (sometimes progressing further to /tʃ/) in the northwest but /tt/ in the southeast.
The reality is somewhat more complex. All of the "southeast" characteristics apply to all languages southeast of the line, and all of the "northwest"
characteristics apply to all languages in France and (most of) Spain. However, the Gallo-Italic languages are somewhere in between. All of these languages
do have the "northwest" characteristics of lenition and loss of gemination. However:
The Gallo‒Italic languages have vowel-changing plurals rather than /s/ plurals.
The Lombard language in north-central Italy and the Rhaeto-Romance languages have the "southeast" characteristic of /tʃ/ instead of /(t)s/ for
palatalized /k/.
The Venetian language in northeast Italy and some of the Rhaeto-Romance languages have the "southeast" characteristic of developing /kt/ to /tt/.
Lenition of post-vocalic /p t k/ is widespread as an allophonic phonetic realization in Italy below the La Spezia-Rimini line, including Corsica and most
of Sardinia.
On top of this, the ancient Mozarabic language in southern Spain, at the far end of the "northwest" group, had the "southeast" characteristics of lack of
lenition and palatalization of /k/ to /tʃ/. Certain languages around the Pyrenees (e.g. some highland Aragonese dialects) also lack lenition, and northern
French dialects such as Norman and Picard have palatalization of /k/ to /tʃ/ (although this is possibly an independent, secondary development, since /k/
between vowels, i.e. when subject to lenition, developed to /dz/ rather than /dʒ/, as would be expected for a primary development).
The usual solution to these issues is to create various nested subgroups. Western Romance is split into the Gallo-Iberian languages, in which lenition
happens and which include nearly all the Western Romance languages, and the Pyrenean-Mozarabic group, which includes the remaining languages
without lenition (and is unlikely to be a valid clade; probably at least two clades, one for Mozarabic and one for Pyrenean). Gallo-Iberian is split in turn
into the Iberian languages (e.g. Spanish and Portuguese), and the larger Gallo-Romance languages (stretching from eastern Spain to northeast Italy).
Probably a more accurate description, however, would be to say that there was a focal point of innovation located in central France, from which a series of
innovations spread out as areal changes. The La Spezia–Rimini Line represents the farthest point to the southeast that these innovations reached,
corresponding to the northern chain of the Apennine Mountains, which cuts straight across northern Italy and forms a major geographic barrier to further
language spread.
This would explain why some of the "northwest" features (almost all of which can be characterized as innovations) end at differing points in northern
Italy, and why some of the languages in geographically remote parts of Spain (in the south, and high in the Pyrenees) are lacking some of these features. It
also explains why the languages in France (especially standard French) seem to have innovated earlier and more extensively than other Western Romance
languages.
Many of the "southeast" features also apply to the Eastern Romance languages (particularly, Romanian), despite the geographic discontinuity. Examples
are lack of lenition, maintenance of intertonic vowels, use of vowel-changing plurals, and palatalization of /k/ to /tʃ/. This has led some researchers,
following Walther von Wartburg, to postulate a basic two-way east–west division, with the "Eastern" languages including Romanian and central and
southern Italian, although this view is troubled by the contrast of numerous Romanian phonological developments with those found in Italy below the La
Spezia-Rimini line. Among these features, in Romanian geminates reduced historically to single units — which may be an independent development or
perhaps due to Slavic influence — and /kt/ developed into /pt/, whereas in central and southern Italy geminates are preserved and /kt/ underwent
assimilation to /tt/.[13]
Despite being the first Romance language to diverge from spoken Latin,[14] Sardinian does not fit at all into this sort of division.[15] It is clear that
Sardinian became linguistically independent from the remainder of the Romance languages at an extremely early date, possibly already by the first
century BC.[16] Sardinian contains a large number of archaic features, including total lack of palatalization of /k/ and /ɡ/ and a large amount of vocabulary
preserved nowhere else, including some items already archaic by the time of Classical Latin (first century BC). Sardinian has plurals in /s/ but post-vocalic
lenition of voiceless consonants is normally limited to the status of an allophonic rule (e.g. [k]ane 'dog' but su [ɡ]ane or su [ɣ]ane 'the dog'), and there are
a few innovations unseen elsewhere, such as a change of /au/ to /a/. Use of su < ipsum as an article is a retained archaic feature that also exists in the
Catalan of the Balearic Islands and that used to be more widespread in Occitano-Romance, and is known as article salat (literally the "salted article"),
while Sardinian shares develarisation of earlier /kw/ and /ɡw/ with Romanian: Sard. abba, Rum. apă 'water'; Sard. limba, Rom. limbă 'language' (cf.
Italian acqua, lingua).
Dialects of southern Italy, Sardinia and Corsica
Outcome of stressed Classical Latin vowels in dialects of southern Italy, Sardinia and Corsica
Classical Proto- Castel- Verbi- Caro- Nuorese Southern Taravo Northern Cap de
Senisese Neapolitan Sicilian
Latin Romance mezzano carese vignese Sardinian Corsican Corsican Corsican Corse
ī /iː/ /i/ /i/ /i/ /i/ /i/ /i/
/i/ /ɪ/ /i/ /i/
ĭ /i/ /i/ /ɛ/
/e/ /e/ /e/
ē, oe̯ /eː/ /e/ /ɪ/ (/ɛ/) /ɛ/
/ɛ/ /ɛ/ /e/ /e/
ĕ, ae̯ /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /e/ (/ɛ/)
ā /a/
/a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/
ă /aː/ /a/
au̯ /aw/ /ɔ/? /o/? /ɔ/? /ɔ/? /ɔ/? /ɔ/? /ɔ/ /o/? /ɔ/? /o/?
ŏ /ɔ/ /ɔ/ /ɔ/ /ɔ/ /ɔ/
/ɔ/ /o/ /ɔ/ /o/ /o/
ō, au̯ /oː/ /ʊ/ (/ɔ/) /ɔ/ /o/
/o/ /o/
ŭ /u/ /u/ /ɔ/
/u/ /u/ /ʊ/ /u/ /u/
ū /uː/ /u/ /u/ /u/ /u/ /u/
The Sardinian-type vowel system is also found in a small region belonging to the Lausberg area (also known as Lausberg zone; compare Neapolitan
language § Distribution) of southern Italy, in southern Basilicata, and there is evidence that the Romanian-type "compromise" vowel system was once
characteristic of most of southern Italy,[17] although it is now limited to a small area in western Basilicata centered on the Castelmezzano dialect, the area
being known as Vorposten, the German word for 'outpost'. The Sicilian vowel system, now generally thought to be a development based on the Italo-
Western system, is also represented in southern Italy, in southern Cilento, Calabria and the southern tip of Apulia, and may have been more widespread in
the past.[18]
The greatest variety of vowel systems outside of southern Italy is found in Corsica, where the Italo-Western type is represented in most of the north and
center and the Sardinian type in the south, as well as a system resembling the Sicilian vowel system (and even more closely the Carovignese system) in the
Cap Corse region; finally, in between the Italo-Western and Sardinian system is found, in the Taravo region, a completely unique vowel system that cannot
be derived from any other system, which has reflexes like Sardinian for the most part, but the short high vowels of Latin are uniquely reflected as mid-low
vowels.[19]
Gallo-Romance languages
Gallo-Romance can be divided into the following subgroups:
The Langues d'oïl, including French and closely related languages.

The Franco-Provençal language (also known as Arpitan) of southeastern France, western Switzerland, and Aosta Valley region of northwestern Italy.
The following groups are also sometimes considered part of Gallo-Romance:
The Occitano-Romance languages of southern France, namely Occitan and Gascon.

The Catalan language of eastern Iberia is also sometimes included in Gallo-Romance. This is however disputed by some linguists who prefer to
group it with Iberian Romance, since although Old Catalan is close to Old Occitan, it later adjusted its lexicon to some degree to align with
Spanish. In general however, modern Catalan, especially grammatically, remains closer to modern Occitan than to either Spanish or Portuguese.
The Gallo-Italian languages of northern Italy, including Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian and Romagnol. Ligurian retains the final -o, being the
exception in Gallo-Romance.
The Rhaeto-Romance languages, including Romansh, and Friulian, and Ladin dialects.
The Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative (least conservative) among the Romance languages. Characteristic Gallo-
Romance features generally developed earliest and appear in their most extreme manifestation in the Langue d'oïl, gradually spreading out along
riverways and transalpine roads.
In some ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative. The older stages of many of the languages preserved a two-case system consisting
of nominative and oblique, fully marked on nouns, adjectives and determiners, inherited almost directly from the Latin nominative and accusative and
preserving a number of different declensional classes and irregular forms. The languages closest to the oïl epicenter preserve the case system the best,
while languages at the periphery lose it early.
Notable characteristics of the Gallo-Romance languages are:
Early loss of unstressed final vowels other than /a/ — a defining characteristic of the group.
Further reductions of final vowels in Langue d'oïl and many Gallo-Italic languages, with the feminine /a/ and prop vowel /e/ merging into /ə/, which
is often subsequently dropped.
Early, heavy reduction of unstressed vowels in the interior of a word (another defining characteristic).
Loss of final vowels phonemicized the long vowels that used to be automatic concomitants of stressed open syllables. These phonemic long vowels
are maintained directly in many Northern Italian dialects; elsewhere, phonemic length was lost, but in the meantime many of the long vowels
diphthongized, resulting in a maintenance of the original distinction. The langue d'oïl branch is again at the forefront of innovation, with no less than
five of the seven long vowels diphthongizing (only high vowels were spared).
Front rounded vowels are present in all branches of Gallo-Romance. /u/ usually fronts to /y/, and secondary mid front rounded vowels often develop
from long /oː/ or /ɔː/.
Extreme lenition (i.e. multiple rounds of lenition) occurs in many languages especially in Langue d'oïl and many Gallo-Italian languages.
The Langue d'oïl, Swiss Rhaeto-Romance languages and many of the northern dialects of Occitan have a secondary palatalization of /k/ and /ɡ/
before /a/, producing different results from the primary Romance palatalization: e.g. centum "hundred" > cent /sɑ̃/, cantum "song" > chant /ʃɑ̃/.
Other than the Occitano-Romance languages, most Gallo-Romance languages are subject-obligatory (whereas all the rest of the Romance languages
are pro-drop languages). This is a late development triggered by progressive phonetic erosion: Old French was still a null-subject language, and this
only changed upon loss of secondarily final consonants in Middle French.
Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages
Some Romance languages have developed varieties which seem dramatically restructured as to their grammars or to be mixtures with other languages.
There are several dozens of creoles of French, Spanish, and Portuguese origin, some of them spoken as national languages in former European colonies.
Creoles of French:
Antillean (French Antilles, Saint Lucia, Dominica)

Haitian (one of Haiti's two official languages)
Louisiana (US)
Mauritian (lingua franca of Mauritius)
Réunion (native language of Réunion)
Seychellois (Seychelles' official language)
Creoles of Spanish:
Chavacano (in part of Philippines)

Palenquero (in part of Colombia)
Creoles of Portuguese:
Angolar (regional language in São Tomé and Principe)

Cape Verdean (Cape Verde's national language; includes several distinct varieties)
Forro (regional language in São Tomé and Príncipe)
Kristang (Malaysia)
Macanese (Macau)
Papiamento (Dutch Antilles official language)
Guinea-Bissau Creole (Guinea-Bissau's national language)
Auxiliary and constructed languages
Latin and the Romance languages have also served as the inspiration and basis of numerous auxiliary and constructed languages, so-called "Neo-Romance
languages".[20][21]
The concept was first developed in 1903 by Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano, under the title Latino sine flexione.[22] He wanted to create a
naturalistic international language, as opposed to an autonomous constructed language like Esperanto or Volapük which were designed for maximal
simplicity of lexicon and derivation of words. Peano used Latin as the base of his language, because at the time of his flourishing it was the de facto
international language of scientific communication.
Other languages developed include Idiom Neutral (1902), Interlingue-Occidental (1922), Interlingua (1951) and Lingua Franca Nova (1998). The most
famous and successful of these is Interlingua. Each of these languages has attempted to varying degrees to achieve a pseudo-Latin vocabulary as common
as possible to living Romance languages. Some languages have been constructed specifically for communication among speakers of Romance languages,
the Pan-Romance languages.
There are also languages created for artistic purposes only, such as Talossan. Because Latin is a very well attested ancient language, some amateur
linguists have even constructed Romance languages that mirror real languages that developed from other ancestral languages. These include Brithenig
(which mirrors Welsh), Breathanach[23] (mirrors Irish), Wenedyk (mirrors Polish), Þrjótrunn (mirrors Icelandic),[24] and Helvetian (mirrors German).[25]
Modern status
The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French,
Italian and Romanian, which together cover a vast territory in Europe and beyond, and work as official and
national languages in dozens of countries.
French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of the European Union.
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan were the official languages of the defunct
Latin Union; and French and Spanish are two of the six official languages of the United Nations. Outside
Europe, French, Portuguese and Spanish are spoken and enjoy official status in various countries that
emerged from the respective colonial empires.
Spanish is an official language in Spain and in nine countries of South America, home to about half that
continent's population; in six countries of Central America (all except Belize); and in Mexico. In the
European extent of Romance languages in the
Caribbean, it is official in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. In all these countries, Latin
20th century
American Spanish is the vernacular language of the majority of the population, giving Spanish the most
native speakers of any Romance language. In Africa it is an official language of Equatorial Guinea.
Portuguese, in its original homeland, Portugal, is spoken by virtually the entire population of 10 million.
As
the official language of Brazil, it is spoken by more than 200 million people in that country, as well as by
neighboring residents of eastern Paraguay and northern Uruguay, accounting for a little more than half the
population of South America, thus making Portuguese the most spoken official Romance language in a
single country. It is the official language of six African countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau,
Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Príncipe), and is spoken as a first language by perhaps
30 million residents of that continent.[26] In Asia, Portuguese is co-official with other languages in East
Timor and Macau, while most Portuguese-speakers in Asia—some 400,000[27]—are in Japan due to return
immigration of Japanese Brazilians. In North America 1,000,000 people speak Portuguese as their home
language.[28]
In Oceania, Portuguese is the second most spoken Romance language, after French, due
mainly to the number of speakers in East Timor. Its closest relative, Galician, has official status in the
autonomous community of Galicia in Spain, together with Spanish.
Outside Europe, French is spoken natively most in the Canadian province of Quebec, and in parts of New Number of native speakers of each Romance
Brunswick and Ontario. Canada is officially bilingual, with French and English being the official languages. language, as fractions of the total 690 million
In parts of the Caribbean, such as Haiti, French has official status, but most people speak creoles such as (2007)
Haitian Creole as their native language. French also has official status in much of Africa, with relatively few
native speakers but larger numbers of second language speakers. In France's remaining overseas
possessions, native use of French is increasing.
Although Italy also had some colonial possessions before World War II, its language did not remain
official after the end of the colonial domination. As a result, Italian outside of Italy and Switzerland
is now spoken only as a minority language by immigrant communities in North and South America
and Australia. In some former Italian colonies in Africa—namely Libya, Eritrea and Somalia—it is
spoken by a few educated people in commerce and government.
Romania did not establish a colonial empire, and the native range of Romanian includes not only the
former Soviet republic of Moldova, where it is the dominant language and spoken by a majority of
Romance languages in the World
the population, but neighboring areas in Serbia (Vojvodina and the Bor District), Bulgaria, Hungary,
and Ukraine (Bukovina, Budjak) and in some villages between the Dniester and Bug rivers. [29] As
with Italian, Romanian is spoken outside of its ethnic range by immigrant communities, such as other European countries (notably Italy, Spain, and
Portugal, where in all three of which Romanian-speakers form about two percent of the population), as well as to Israel by Romanian Jews,[30] where it is
the native language of five percent of the population,[31] and is spoken by many more as a secondary language. The Aromanian language is spoken today
by Aromanians in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Greece.[32]
The total native speakers of Romance languages are divided as follows (with their ranking within the languages of the world in brackets):[33][34]
Spanish (Hispanosphere) 49% (2nd)

Portuguese (Lusosphere) 26% (6th)
French (Francophonie) 8.6% (18th)
Italian 7.7% (23rd)
Romanian 3.0% (49th)
Catalan 0.9% (not in the top 100)
Others 3.6%
Catalan is the official language of Andorra. In Spain, it is co-official with Spanish in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands, and it
is recognized, but not official, in La Franja, and in Aragon. In addition, it is spoken by many residents of Alghero, on the island of Sardinia, and it is co-
official in that city. Galician, with more than a million native speakers, is official together with Spanish in Galicia, and has legal recognition in
neighbouring territories in Castilla y León. A few other languages have official recognition on a regional or otherwise limited level; for instance, Asturian
and Aragonese in Spain; Mirandese in Portugal; Friulian, Sardinian and Franco-Provençal in Italy; and Romansh in Switzerland.
The remaining Romance languages survive mostly as spoken languages for informal contact. National governments have historically viewed linguistic
diversity as an economic, administrative or military liability, as well as a potential source of separatist movements; therefore, they have generally fought to
eliminate it, by extensively promoting the use of the official language, restricting the use of the other languages in the media, recognizing them as mere
"dialects", or even persecuting them. As a result, all of these languages are considered endangered to varying degrees according to the UNESCO Red Book
of Endangered Languages, ranging from "vulnerable" (e.g. Sicilian and Venetian) to "severely endangered" (Franco-Provençal, most of the Occitan
varieties). Since the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities has allowed some of these languages to
start recovering their prestige and lost rights. Yet it is unclear whether these political changes will be enough to reverse the decline of minority Romance
languages.
History
Romance languages are the continuation of Vulgar Latin, the popular and colloquial sociolect of Latin spoken by soldiers, settlers, and merchants of the
Roman Empire, as distinguished from the classical form of the language spoken by the Roman upper classes, the form in which the language was generally
written.[14] Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, made Latin the dominant
native language in continental Western Europe. Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western
Germany, Pannonia and the whole Balkans.
During the Empire's decline, and after its fragmentation and the collapse of its Western half in the fifth and sixth centuries, the spoken varieties of Latin
became more isolated from each other, with the western dialects coming under heavy Germanic influence (the Goths and Franks in particular) and the
eastern dialects coming under Slavic influence.[35][36] The dialects diverged from classical Latin at an accelerated rate and eventually evolved into a
continuum of recognizably different typologies. The colonial empires established by Portugal, Spain, and France from the fifteenth century onward spread
their languages to the other continents to such an extent that about two-thirds of all Romance language speakers today live outside Europe.
Despite other influences (e.g. substratum from pre-Roman languages, especially Continental Celtic languages; and superstratum from later Germanic or
Slavic invasions), the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin. However, some
notable differences occur between today's Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost
the declension system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of prepositions.
Vulgar Latin
Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of comprehensive research,
and the literature is often hard to interpret or generalize. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves,
displaced peoples, and forced resettlers, more likely to be natives of conquered lands than natives of
Rome. In Western Europe, Latin gradually replaced Celtic and other Italic languages, which were
related to it by a shared Indo-European origin. Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated
the adoption of Latin.[38][39][40]
Vulgar Latin is believed to have already had most of the features shared by all Romance languages,
which distinguish them from Classical Latin, such as the almost complete loss of the Latin
grammatical case system and its replacement by prepositions; the loss of the neuter grammatical
gender and comparative inflections; replacement of some verb paradigms by innovations (e.g. the
synthetic future gave way to an originally analytic strategy now typically formed by infinitive +
evolved present indicative forms of 'have'); the use of articles; and the initial stages of the
palatalization of the plosives /k/, /ɡ/, and /t/.
To some scholars, this suggests the form of Vulgar Latin that evolved into the Romance languages
was around during the time of the Roman Empire (from the end of the first century BC), and was Length of the Roman rule and the Romance
spoken alongside the written Classical Latin which was reserved for official and formal occasions. Languages[37]
Other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and
register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and
the same language, which was true until very approximately the second half of the 7th century.
However, within two hundred years Latin became a dead language since "the Romanized people of
Europe could no longer understand texts that were read aloud or recited to them,"[41] i.e. Latin had
ceased to be a first language and became a foreign language that had to be learned, if the label Latin
is constrained to refer to a state of the language frozen in past time and restricted to linguistic
features for the most part typical of higher registers.
With the rise of the Roman Empire, Vulgar Latin spread first throughout Italy and then through
southern, western, central, and southeastern Europe, and northern Africa along parts of western
Asia.[42]: 1
Fall of the Western Roman Empire
During the political decline of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, there were large-scale
migrations into the empire, and the Latin-speaking world was fragmented into several independent
states. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by
Huns. These incursions isolated the Vlachs from the rest of Romance-speaking Europe. Romance languages in Europe
British and African Romance—the forms of Vulgar Latin used in Britain and the Roman province of
Africa, where it had been spoken by much of the urban population—disappeared in the Middle Ages (as did Pannonian Romance in what is now Hungary,
and Moselle Romance in Germany). But the Germanic tribes that had penetrated Roman Italy, Gaul, and Hispania eventually adopted Latin/Romance and
the remnants of the culture of ancient Rome alongside existing inhabitants of those regions, and so Latin remained the dominant language there. In part
due to regional dialects of the Latin language and local environments, several languages evolved from it.[42]: 4
Fall of the Eastern Roman empire
Meanwhile, large-scale migrations into the Eastern Roman Empire started with the Goths and continued with Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Pechenegs,
Hungarians and Cumans. The invasions of Slavs were the most thoroughgoing, and they partially reduced the Romanic element in the Balkans.[43]
The
invasion of the Turks and conquest of Constantinople in 1453 marked the end of the empire. The Slavs named the Romance-speaking population Vlachs,
while the latter called themselves "Rumân" or "Român", from the Latin "Romanus".[44] The Daco-Roman dialect became fully distinct from the three
dialects spoken South of the Danube—Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian—during the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Romanians
(sometimes called Vlachs or Wallachians) emerged as a people.[45]
Early Romance
Over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, local changes in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon accumulated to the point that the speech of
any locale was noticeably different from another. In principle, differences between any two lects increased the more they were separated geographically,
reducing easy mutual intelligibility between speakers of distant communities.[46] Clear evidence of some levels of change is found in the Reichenau
Glosses, an eighth-century compilation of about 1,200 words from the fourth-century Vulgate of Jerome that had changed in phonological form or were no
longer normally used, along with their eighth-century equivalents in proto-Franco-Provençal. The following are some examples with reflexes in several
modern Romance languages for comparison:
Classical
/ 4th 8th cent.
Franco-
English French Romansh Italian Spanish Portuguese Romanian Catalan Sa
cent.
(Reichenau) Provençal
(Vulgate)
una vegada
(u
once semel una vice una fês une fois (ina giada) (una volta) una vez uma vez (o dată) (un cop,
bo
una volta)
liberi / (bambini) /
(niños) /
infantes (nens, etc.) /
(p
children/infants infantes enfants enfants unfants (copii)
infantes infanti infantes (crianças) infants (p
flare / su
to blow suflare soflar souffler suflar soffiare soplar soprar (a) sufla (bufar)
sofflare su
ca
to sing canere cantare çhantar chanter chantar cantare cantar cantar (a) cânta cantar
ca
is
optimi / (optimi,
the best (plur.) meliores los mèljörs les meilleurs ils megliers i migliori los mejores os melhores els millors so
meliores cei mai buni)
m
bela /
(bonica,
pulchra / (hermosa, bonita, linda) /
(formosa,
beautiful bella bèla belle bella bella frumoasă polida) /
be
bella bella bonita,
bella
linda)
(a
in the mouth in ore in bucca en la boçhe dans la bouche in la bucca nella bocca en la boca na boca[47] a la boca in
îmbuca)[48]
ier
winter hiems hibernus hìvern hiver inviern inverno invierno inverno iarnă hivern
ib
In all of the above examples, the words appearing in the fourth century Vulgate are the same words as would have been used in Classical Latin of c. 50 BC.
It is likely that some of these words had already disappeared from casual speech by the time of the Glosses; but if so, they may well have been still widely
understood, as there is no recorded evidence that the common people of the time had difficulty understanding the language.
By the 8th century, the situation was very different. During the late 8th century, Charlemagne, holding that "Latin of his age was by classical standards
intolerably corrupt",[46]: 6 successfully imposed Classical Latin as an artificial written vernacular for Western Europe. Unfortunately, this meant that
parishioners could no longer understand the sermons of their priests, forcing the Council of Tours in 813 to issue an edict that priests needed to translate
their speeches into the rustica romana lingua, an explicit acknowledgement of the reality of the Romance languages as separate languages from
Latin.[46]: 6
By this time, and possibly as early as the 6th century according to Price (1984),[46]: 6 the Romance lects had split apart enough to be able to speak of
separate Gallo-Romance, Ibero-Romance, Italo-Romance and Eastern Romance languages. Some researchers have postulated that the major divergences
in the spoken dialects began or accelerated considerably in the 5th century, as the formerly widespread and efficient communication networks of the
Western Roman Empire rapidly broke down, leading to the total disappearance of the Western Roman Empire by the end of the century. The critical
period between the 5th–10th centuries AD is poorly documented because little or no writing from the chaotic "Dark Ages" of the 5th–8th centuries has
survived, and writing after that time was in consciously classicized Medieval Latin, with vernacular writing only beginning in earnest in the 11th or 12th
centuries. An exception such as the Oaths of Strasbourg is evidence that by the ninth century effective communication with a non-learnèd audience was
carried out in evolved Romance.
A language that was closely related to medieval Romanian was spoken during the Dark Ages by Vlachs in the Balkans, Herzegovina, Dalmatia (Morlachs),
Ukraine (Hutsuls), Poland (Gorals), Slovakia, and Czech Moravia, but gradually these communities lost their maternal language.[49]
Recognition of the vernaculars
Between the 10th and 13th centuries, some local vernaculars developed a written form and began to supplant Latin in many of its roles. In some countries,
such as Portugal, this transition was expedited by force of law; whereas in others, such as Italy, many prominent poets and writers used the vernacular of
their own accord – some of the most famous in Italy being Giacomo da Lentini and Dante Alighieri. Well before that, the vernacular was also used for
practical purposes, such as the testimonies in the Placiti Cassinesi, written 960–963.
Uniformization and standardization
The invention of the printing press brought a tendency towards greater uniformity of standard languages within political boundaries, at the expense of
other Romance languages and dialects less favored politically. In France, for instance, the dialect spoken in the region of Paris gradually spread to the
entire country, and the Occitan of the south lost ground.
Sound changes
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"), Romance - Germanic language border:[50]
and nominative singular noun forms, especially of neuter nouns (e.g. lac "milk", mel "honey", cor • Early Middle Ages
"heart"). Many of these prepositions and conjunctions were replaced by others, while the nouns • Early Twentieth Century
were regularized into forms based on their oblique stems that avoided the final consonants (e.g.
*lacte, *mele, *core).
Final -m was dropped in Vulgar Latin. Even in Classical Latin, final -am, -em, -um (inflectional suffixes of the accusative case) were 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/ e.g. Spanish quien < quem "whom", French rien "anything" < rem "thing"; note
especially French and Catalan mon < meum "my (m.sg.)" which are derived from monosyllabic /meu̯ m/ > */meu̯ n/, /mun/, whereas Spanish disyllabic
mío and Portuguese and Catalan monosyllabic meu are derived from disyllabic /ˈme.um/ > */ˈmeo/.
As a result, only the following final consonants occurred in Vulgar Latin:
Final -t in third-person singular verb forms, and -nt (later reduced in many languages to -n) in third-person plural verb forms.
Final -s (including -x) 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", sex "six", crās "tomorrow", etc.).
Final -n in some monosyllables (from earlier -m).
Final -r, -d in some prepositions (e.g. ad, per), which were clitics that attached phonologically to the following word.
Very occasionally, final -c, e.g. Occitan oc "yes" < hoc, Old French avuec "with" < apud hoc (although these instances were 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 1100. In Old French, this occurred only when a vowel still preceded the t (generally /ə/ < Latin
a). Hence amat "he loves" > Old French aime but venit "he comes" > Old French vient: the /t/ was never dropped and survives into Modern French in
liaison, e.g. vient-il? "is he coming?" /vjɛ̃ti(l)/ (the corresponding /t/ in aime-t-il? is analogical, not inherited). Old French also kept the third-person
plural ending -nt intact.
In Italo-Romance and the Eastern Romance languages, eventually all final consonants were either dropped or protected by an epenthetic vowel, except in
clitic forms (e.g. prepositions con, per). Modern Standard Italian still has almost no consonant-final words, although Romanian has resurfaced them
through later loss of final /u/ and /i/. For example, amās "you love" > ame > Italian ami; amant "they love" > *aman > Ital. amano. On the evidence of
"sloppily written" Lombardic language documents, however, the loss of final /s/ in Italy did not occur until the 7th or 8th century, 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 after a long vowel /s/ became /j/ rather than simply disappearing: nōs > noi "we", se(d)ēs > sei "you are", crās > crai "tomorrow" (southern
Italian). In unstressed syllables, the resulting diphthongs were simplified: canēs > /ˈkanej/ > cani "dogs"; amīcās > /aˈmikaj/ > amiche /aˈmike/ "
(female) friends", where nominative amīcae should produce **amice rather than amiche (note 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 (as well as primary ones) were lost before
around 1700, but tertiary final consonants later arose through the loss of /ə/ < -a. Hence masculine frīgidum "cold" > Old French freit /frwεt/ > froid
/fʁwa/, feminine frigidam > Old French freide /frwεdə/ > 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
postalveolar consonants in most Romance languages, e.g. Italian /ʃ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ts/, /dz/, /ɲ/, /ʎ/.
The following historical stages occurred:
Stage Environment Consonants affected Result Languages affected

1 /t/, /d/ /tsʲ/, /jj~dzʲ~ddʒʲ/ all
all remaining, except labial
2 before /j/ (from e, i in /ɲɲ/, /ʎʎ/, /Cʲ/
consonants
hiatus)
/ttʃʲ~ttsʲ/, all except Sardinian
3
/jj~ddʒʲ~ddzʲ/
4 before /i/
/k/, /ɡ/ /tʃʲ~tsʲ/, /j~dʒʲ~dzʲ/
5 before /e/ all except Sardinian and Dalmatian
the north-central Gallo-Romance languages (e.g. French, northern Occitan); Rhaeto-
6 before /a/, /au/ /tɕ~tʃʲ/, /dʑ~dʒʲ/
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-Dalmatian 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 the Mozarabic language in al-Andalus (modern 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 [ˈkai̯ lu(m)] with an initial [k], became Italian cielo [ˈtʃɛːlo], Romanian cer [tʃer], Spanish cielo [ˈθjelo]/[ˈsjelo], French ciel [sjɛl],
Catalan cel [ˈsɛɫ], and Portuguese céu [ˈsɛw].
The outcome of palatalized /d/ and /ɡ/ is less clear:
Original /j/ has the same outcome as palatalized /ɡ/ everywhere.

Romanian fairly consistently has /z/ < /dz/ from palatalized /d/, but /dʒ/ from palatalized /ɡ/.
Italian inconsistently has /ddz~ddʒ/ from palatalized /d/, and /ddʒ/ from palatalized /ɡ/.
Most other languages have the same results for palatalized /d/ and /ɡ/: consistent /dʒ/ initially, but either /j/ or /dʒ/ medially (depending on language
and exact context). But Spanish has /j/ (phonetically [ɟ͡ ʝ]) initially except before /o/, /u/; nearby Gascon is similar.
This suggests that palatalized /d/ > /dʲ/ > either /j/ or /dz/ depending on location, while palatalized /ɡ/ > /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, ɡ/ palatalized by /e, i, j/ and by /a, au/ were different: centum "hundred" > cent /sɑ̃/ but cantum "song" > chant /ʃɑ̃/.
French also underwent palatalization of labials before /j/: Vulgar Latin /pj, bj~vj, mj/ > Old French /tʃ, dʒ, ndʒ/ (sēpia "cuttlefish" > seiche, rubeus "red"
> rouge, sīmia "monkey" > singe).
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.8th century), 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 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⟩. (This orthographic trait has passed
into Modern English through Norman French-speaking scribes writing Middle English; this replaced the earlier system of Old English, which had
developed its own hard-soft distinction with the soft ⟨c, g⟩ representing [tʃ, j~dʒ].) 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 digraphs containing ⟨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 vowels (Spanish ⟨cu, gü⟩, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese ⟨qü,
gü⟩).[51] 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". In the case of
Italian, the convention of digraphs <ch> and <gh> to represent /k/ and /ɡ/ before written <e, i> results in similar orthographic alternations, such as
dimentico 'I forget', dimentichi 'you forget', baco 'worm', bachi 'worms' with [k] or pago 'I pay', paghi 'you pay' and lago 'lake', laghi 'lakes' with [ɡ]. The
use in Italian of <ci> and <gi> to represent /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ before vowels written <a,o,u> neatly distinguishes dico 'I say' with /k/ from dici 'you say' with /tʃ/
or ghiro 'dormouse' /ɡ/ and giro 'turn, revolution' /dʒ/, but with orthographic <ci> and <gi> also representing the sequence of /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ and the actual
vowel /i/ (/ditʃi/ dici, /dʒiro/ giro), and no generally observed convention of indicating stress position, the status of i when followed by another vowel in
spelling can be unrecognizable. For example, the written forms offer no indication that <cia> in camicia 'shirt' represents a single unstressed syllable /tʃa/
with no /i/ at any level (/kaˈmitʃa/ → [kaˈmiːtʃa] ~ [kaˈmiːʃa]), but that underlying the same spelling <cia> in farmacia 'pharmacy' is a bisyllabic
sequence consisting of the stressed syllable /tʃi/ and syllabic /a/ (/farmaˈtʃi.a/ → [farmaˈtʃiːa] ~ [farmaˈʃiːa]).
Lenition
Stop consonants shifted by lenition in Vulgar Latin in some areas.
The voiced labial consonants /b/ and /w/ (represented by ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩, respectively) both developed a fricative [β] as an intervocalic allophone.[52] 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 resulting in phonological restructuring) 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 [ˈviːta],
Portuguese vida [ˈvidɐ] (European Portuguese [ˈviðɐ]), Spanish vida [ˈbiða] (Southern Peninsular Spanish [ˈbi.a]), and French vie [vi]. Some scholars
once speculated that these sound changes may be due in part to the influence of Continental Celtic languages, but scholarship of the past few decades
challenges that hypothesis.
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.
The sound /h/ was usually lost, except in Romanian. Some Romance languages re-developed /h/, however, notably Spanish (from /ʃ/, /ʒ/, or /ks/, and
spelled as either "j" or soft "g") and Brazilian Portuguese (from /r/).
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 /bb/, /dd/, /ɡɡ/, /pp/, /tt/, /kk/, /ll/, /mm/, /nn/, /rr/, /ss/, etc.,
where the doubling indicates either actual length or, in the case of plosives and affricates, a short hold before the consonant is released, in many cases with
distinctive lexical value: e.g. note /ˈnɔte/ (notes) vs. notte /ˈnɔtte/ (night), cade /ˈkade/ (s/he, it falls) vs. cadde /ˈkadde/ (s/he, it fell), caro /ˈkaro/ (dear,
expensive) vs. carro /ˈkarro/ (cart). They may even occur at the beginning of words in Romanesco, Neapolitan, Sicilian and other southern varieties, 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. In much of central and southern Italy, the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ weaken
synchronically to fricative [ʃ] and [ʒ] between vowels, while their geminate congeners do not, e.g. cacio /ˈkatʃo/ → [ˈkaːʃo] (cheese) vs. caccio /ˈkattʃo/ →
[ˈkattʃo] (I chase).
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 l·l (Catalan) or ll (Occitan), but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech in both languages.
Vowel prosthesis
In Late Latin a prosthetic vowel /i/ (lowered to /e/ in most languages) was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with /s/ (referred to as s
impura) and a voiceless consonant (#sC- > isC-):
scrībere 'to write' > Sardinian iscribere, Spanish escribir, Portuguese escrever, Catalan escriure, Old French escri(v)re (mod. écrire);
spatha "sword" > Sard ispada, Sp/Pg espada, Cat espasa, OFr espeḍe (modern épée);
spiritus "spirit" > Sard ispìritu, Sp espíritu, Pg espírito, Cat esperit, French esprit;
Stephanum "Stephen" > Sard Istèvene, Sp Esteban, Cat Esteve, Pg Estêvão, OFr Estievne (mod. Étienne);
status "state" > Sard istadu, Sp/Pg estado, Cat estat, OFr estat (mod. état).
Prosthetic /i/ ~ /e/ in Romance languages may have been influenced by Continental Celtic languages, although the phenomenon exists or existed in some
areas where Celtic was never present (e.g. Sardinia, southern Italy). While Western Romance words undergo prothesis, cognates in Balkan Romance and
southern Italo-Romance do not, e.g. Italian scrivere, spada, spirito, Stefano, and stato. 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 a prosthetic /i/ if a consonant preceded such clusters, so that 'in Switzerland' was in [i]Svizzera. Some speakers still use the
prothetic [i] productively, and it is fossilized in a few set locutions such as in ispecie 'especially' or per iscritto 'in writing' (although in this case its survival
may be due partly to the influence of the separate word iscritto < Latin īnscrīptus). The association of /i/ ~ /j/ and /s/ also led to the vocalization of word-
final -s in Italian, Romanian, certain Occitan dialects, and the Spanish dialect of Chocó in Colombia.[53]
Stressed vowels
Loss of vowel length, reorientation
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.[54] 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,[55] 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 Evolution of stressed vowels in early Romance
system. In fact, Sicilian passed Proto-
Balkan
Western
Classical Sardinian Sicilian

through the same developments as Romance Romance Romance
the main bulk of Italo-Western
Acad.1 Roman IPA Acad.1 IPA IPA
languages. Subsequently, however,
high-mid vowels (but not low-mid ī long i /iː/
vowels) were raised in all syllables, i /iː/ [i] /i/ /i/
ȳ long y /yː/
stressed and unstressed; i.e. /e o/ > /i/
/i u/. The result is a five-vowel /a ɛ i i (ĭ) short i /i/
ɔ u/. /i/ [ɪ] /i/
y (y̆ ) short y /y/
ẹ /e/ /e/
Further variants are found in southern ē long e /eː/ [ɛː]
/e(ː)/ [e]
Italy and Corsica, which also boasts a oe (œ) oe /oj/ > /eː/
completely distinct system (see above). /e/
e (ĕ) short e /e/ [ɛ]
ę /ɛ(ː)/ [ɛ] /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /ɛ/
The Proto-Romance allophonic vowel- ae (æ) ae /aj/ > /ɛː/
length system was rephonemicized in ā long a /aː/
the Gallo-Romance languages as a a /a(ː)/ [a] /a/ /a/ /a/ /a/
result of the loss of many final vowels. a (ă) short a /a/
Some northern Italian languages (e.g. o (ŏ) short o /o/ [ɔ] ǫ /ɔ(ː)/ [ɔ] /ɔ/ /ɔ/
Friulian) still maintain this secondary
ō long o /oː/ [ɔː]
phonemic length, but most languages /o/ /o/
au
/o(ː)/ [o]
dropped it by either diphthongizing or au /aw/ > /oː/ ọ /o/
(a few words) /u/
shortening the new long vowels.
u (ŭ) short u /u/ /u/ [ʊ]
French phonemicized a third vowel /u/ /u/
ū long u /uː/ u /uː/ [u] /u/
length system around AD 1300 as a
result of the sound change /VsC/ > /aw/
/VhC/ > /VːC/ (where V is any vowel au
au /aw/ au /aw/ /aw/ /aw/ /aw/

(most words) [aʊ]
and C any consonant). This vowel
length was eventually lost by around AD
1 Traditional academic transcription in Latin and Romance studies, respectively.
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 1st century a.d. 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" >
*prēda /preːda/ > French proie (vs. expected **priée), Italian preda (not **prieda) "prey"; or faenum "hay" > *fēnum [feːnũ] > Spanish heno, French foin
(but Italian fieno /fjɛno/).
oe generally merged with /eː/: poenam "punishment" > Romance */pena/ > Spanish/Italian pena, French peine; foedus "ugly" > Romance */fedo/ >
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[56]) and so oe was mostly limited to Greek loanwords, which were typically learned (high-register) terms.
au merged with ō /oː/ 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⟩, which has developed to /o/ (and still remains as /ou/ in some dialects, and /oi/ in others). 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
/oː/, 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 (but notice Portuguese cauda).[57] Similarly, Spanish oreja, Portuguese orelha,
French oreille, Romanian ureche, and Sardinian olícra, orícla "ear" must derive from ōric(u)la rather than Classical auris (Occitan aurelha was probably
influenced by the unrelated ausir < audīre "to hear"), and the form oricla is in fact reflected in the Appendix Probi.
Further developments
Metaphony
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 Marche of Italy, stressed /ɛ e ɔ o/ are raised to /e i o u/ before final /i/ or /u/:[58] /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 Basilicata, southern Italy, is similar, but the low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ are diphthongized to /je wo/ rather than raised:[59] /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 languages in northern Spain have the same distinction between final /o/ and /u/[60] as in the Central-Southern Italian
languages,[61] with /u/ triggering metaphony.[62] 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
Galician-Portuguese at one point had singular /u/ vs. plural /os/, exactly as in modern Astur-Leonese.[61]
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 open-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/:
Spanish consistently diphthongized all open-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ > /je we/ except for before certain palatal consonants (which raised the vowels to close-
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), the most salient
exception being /ˈbɛne/ bene 'well', perhaps due to the high frequency of apocopated ben (e.g. ben difficile 'quite difficult', ben fatto 'well made' etc.).
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 open-mid and close-mid vowels in many languages. In Spanish
and Romanian, all open-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 open-mid and close-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 close-mid vowels in open syllables
and the open-mid vowels in closed syllables. In French, 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 /patsʲe/ "peace" > PWR */padzʲe/ (lenition) > OF paiz /pajts/; *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 */doltsʲe/ > OF dolz /duɫts/ > douz /duts/; 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 nasalized, 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 , mɐ̃w̃ s/; 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), /ʁa
ˈzɐ̃ũ, ʁɐˈzõj̃ʃ/ (Portugal). Sometimes the nasalization was eliminated: lūna "moon" > Galician-Portuguese lũa > lua; vēna "vein" > Galician-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).
Front-rounded vowels
Characteristic of the Gallo-Romance 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
There was more variability in the result of Evolution of unstressed vowels in early Italo-Western Romance
the unstressed vowels. Originally in Proto- Final-unstressed
Romance, the same nine vowels developed Proto-
Non-final
Stressed Later
Later
in unstressed as stressed syllables, and in Romance unstressed Original Italo-

Western-
Gallo-
Primitive
Latin Romance French

Sardinian, they coalesced into the same Romance Romance
five vowels in the same way.
IPA Acad.1 IPA
In Italo-Western Romance, however, a,ā /a/ a /a/ /a/ /ə/
vowels in unstressed syllables were
e,ae /ɛ/ ę /ɛ/
significantly different from stressed
vowels, with yet a third outcome for final ē,oe /e/ /e/ /e/
ẹ /e/ /e/
unstressed syllables. In non-final i,y /ɪ/
unstressed syllables, the seven-vowel
ī,ȳ /i/ i /i/ /i/
system of stressed syllables developed, but ∅; /e/ (prop) ∅; /ə/ (prop)
then the low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ merged into o /ɔ/ ǫ /ɔ/
/o/
the high-mid vowels /e o/. This system is ō,(au) /o/ /o/
still preserved, largely or completely, in all ọ /o/ /o/
of the conservative Romance languages u /ʊ/
/u/
(e.g. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, ū /u/ u /u/
Catalan).
au
/aw/ au /aw/ N/A

(most words)
In final unstressed syllables, results were
1 Traditional academic transcription in Romance studies.
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/.[63]
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 the 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 [nu.za.ˈvɔ̃] "we have", il fait [il.fɛ] "he does" vs. fait-
il ? [fɛ.til] "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
Galician-Portuguese), final-syllable unstressed /e/ was raised to /i/ (but still written ⟨e⟩); this remains in Brazilian Portuguese, but has developed to /ɨ/
in northern and central 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:
septimā́ nam "week" > Italian settimana, Romanian săptămână vs. Spanish/Portuguese semana, French semaine, Occitan/Catalan setmana,
Piedmontese sman-a
quattuórdecim "fourteen"
> Italian quattordici, Examples of evolution of final unstressed vowels:
From least- to most-changed languages

Venetian cuatòrdexe,
Lombard/Piedmontese Proto-Italo-
Conservative
Italian Portuguese Spanish Catalan Old French Modern French

quatòrdes, vs. Spanish English Latin Western1 Central Italian1
catorce, a, e, i, o, u a, e, i, o, u a, e, i, o a, e/-, o a, -/e e, -/e
Portuguese/French
quatorze one (fem.) ūnam [ˈuna] una une
metipsissimus[64] > door portam [ˈpɔrta] porta puerta porta porte
medipsimus
seven septem [ˈsɛtte] sette sete siete set sept
/medíssimos/ ~
/medéssimos/ "self" [65] > sea mare [ˈmare] mare mar mer
Italian medésimo vs. peace pācem [ˈpatʃe] pace paz pau paiz paix
Venetian medemo,
Lombard medemm, Old part partem [ˈparte] parte part
Spanish meísmo, truth veritātem [ˈveritate] verità verdade verdad veritat verité vérité
meesmo (> modern
mother mātrem [ˈmatre] matre madre mãe madre mare meḍre mère
mismo), Galician-
Portuguese meesmo (> twenty vīgintī [veˈenti] vinti venti vinte veinte vint vingt
modern mesmo), Old four quattuor [ˈkwattro] quattro quatro cuatro quatre
French meḍisme (> later
meïsme > MF mesme > eight octō [ˈɔkto] otto oito ocho vuit huit
modern même)[66] when quandō [ˈkwando] quando cuando quan quant quand
bonitā́ tem "goodness" >
fourth quartum [ˈkwartu] quartu quarto cuarto quart
Italian bonità ~ bontà,
Romanian bunătate but one (masc.) ūnum [ˈunu] unu uno un
Spanish bondad, port portum [ˈpɔrtu] portu porto puerto port
Portuguese bondade,
French bonté
collocā́ re "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"
commūnicā́ re "to take communion" > Romanian cumineca vs. Portuguese comungar, Spanish comulgar, Old French comungier
carricā́ re "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
disjējūnā́ re "to break a fast" > *disjūnā́ re > Old French disner "to have lunch" > French dîner "to dine" (but *disjū́ nat > Old French desjune "he has
lunch" > French (il) déjeune "he has lunch")
adjūtā́ re "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
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 (then called 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
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 is Viquipèdia in Catalan but 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, and consistent within any language. Since the spelling systems are based on phonemic
structures rather than phonetics, however, the actual pronunciation of what is represented in standard orthography can be subject to considerable
regional variation, as well as to allophonic differentiation by position in the word or utterance. Among the letters representing the most conspicuous
phonological variations, between Romance languages or with respect to Latin, are the following:
B, V: Merged in Spanish and some dialects of Catalan, where both letters represent a single phoneme pronounced as either [b] or [β] depending on
position, with no differentiation between B and V.
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, phonemically /ɡ/, 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 the fricative [ʒ] in most languages,
or the palatal approximant [j] in Romansh and in Spelling of results of palatalization and related sounds
several of the languages of Italy, and [x] or [h] in Sound Latin Spanish Portuguese French Catalan Italian Romanian
Spanish, depending on the variety. Italian does
not use this letter in native words. hard ⟨c⟩
Q: As in Latin, its phonetic value is that of a hard not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
⟨c⟩
c, i.e. [k], and in native words it is almost always soft ⟨c⟩
followed by a (sometimes silent) u. Romanian + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩

does not use this letter in native words.
soft ⟨c⟩
S: Generally voiceless [s], but voiced [z] between not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
⟨c⟩ ⟨z⟩ ⟨ç⟩ ⟨ci⟩
vowels in some languages. In Spanish,
Romanian, Galician and several varieties of /kw/
Italian, however, it is always pronounced ⟨qu⟩

⟨qu⟩ ⟨cu⟩ ⟨qu⟩ ⟨cu⟩
voiceless between vowels. If the phoneme /s/ is not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
represented by the letter S, predictable /k/
assimilations are normally not shown (e.g. Italian / ⟨qu⟩

⟨qu⟩ ⟨ch⟩
ˈslitta/ 'sled', spelled slitta but pronounced [ˈzlitta], + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩ (inherited)
never with [s]). Also at the end of syllables it may /kw/
represent special allophonic pronunciations. In ⟨qu⟩ ⟨cu⟩ ⟨qu⟩[67] ⟨qü⟩ ⟨qu⟩ ⟨cv⟩
⟨qu⟩ (learned)
Romansh, it also stands for a voiceless or voiced
fricative, [ʃ] or [ʒ], before certain consonants. /ku/ ⟨cu⟩ ⟨cou⟩ ⟨cu⟩
W: No Romance language uses this letter in hard ⟨g⟩
native words, with the exception of Walloon. not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
X: Its pronunciation is rather variable, both ⟨g⟩
soft ⟨g⟩
between and within languages. In the Middle

+ ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩, + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
Ages, the languages of Iberia used this letter to
denote the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], soft ⟨g⟩
⟨g⟩ ⟨j⟩ ⟨g(e)⟩ ⟨j⟩ ⟨gi⟩

which is still the case in modern Catalan and not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
Portuguese. With the Renaissance the classical /ɡw/
pronunciation [ks] – or similar consonant clusters, ⟨gu⟩

⟨gu⟩
such as [ɡz], [ɡs], or [kθ] – were frequently not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩
reintroduced in latinisms and hellenisms. In
/ɡ/
Venetian it represents [z], and in Ligurian the ⟨gu⟩

⟨gu⟩ ⟨gh⟩
voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ]. Italian does not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩ (inherited)
use this letter in native words.
Y: This letter is not used in most languages, with /ɡw/
⟨gu⟩ ⟨gü⟩ ⟨gu⟩[68] ⟨gü⟩ ⟨gu⟩ ⟨gv⟩

the prominent exceptions of French and Spanish, ⟨gu⟩ (learned)
where it represents [j] before vowels (or various /ɡu/ ⟨gu⟩ ⟨gou⟩ ⟨gu⟩
similar fricatives such as the palatal fricative [ʝ], in
Spanish), and the vowel [i] or semivowel [j] soft ⟨ti⟩
⟨z⟩ ⟨ç⟩
not + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩ (inherited)
elsewhere. ⟨z(z)⟩ ⟨ț⟩
Z: In most languages it represents the sound [z]. soft ⟨ti⟩
⟨ti⟩
⟨c⟩
However, in Italian it denotes the affricates [dz] + ⟨e, i, y, ae, oe⟩ (inherited)
and [ts] (which are two separate phonemes, but soft ⟨ti⟩ (learned) ⟨ci⟩ ⟨ti⟩ ⟨ci⟩ ⟨zi⟩ ⟨ți⟩
rarely contrast; among the few examples of
minimal pairs are razza "ray" with [ddz], razza /ʎ/ - ⟨ll⟩ ⟨lh⟩ ⟨il(l)⟩ ⟨ll⟩ ⟨gli⟩ -
"race" with [tts] (note that both are phonetically
/ɲ/ - ⟨ñ⟩ ⟨nh⟩ ⟨gn⟩ ⟨ny⟩ ⟨gn⟩ -
long between vowels); in Romansh the voiceless
affricate [ts]; and in Galician and Spanish it
denotes either the voiceless dental fricative [θ] or [s].
Otherwise, letters that are not combined as digraphs generally represent the same phonemes as suggested by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),
whose design was, in fact, greatly influenced by Romance spelling systems.
Digraphs and trigraphs
Since most Romance languages have more sounds than can be accommodated in the Roman Latin alphabet they all resort to the use of digraphs and
trigraphs – combinations of two or three letters with a single phonemic value. The concept (but not the actual combinations) is derived from Classical
Latin, which used, for example, TH, PH, and CH when transliterating the Greek letters "θ", "ϕ" (later "φ"), and "χ". These were once aspirated sounds in
Greek before changing to corresponding fricatives, and the H represented what sounded to the Romans like an /ʰ/ following /t/, /p/, and /k/ respectively.
Some of the digraphs used in modern scripts are:
CI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican and Romanian to represent /tʃ/ before A, O, or U.
CH: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent /k/ before E or I (including yod /j/); /tʃ/ in
Occitan, Spanish, Astur-leonese and Galician; [c] or [tɕ] in Romansh before A, O or U; and /ʃ/ in most other languages. In Catalan it is used in some
old spelling conventions for /k/.
DD: used in Sicilian and Sardinian to represent the voiced retroflex plosive /ɖ/. In recent history more accurately transcribed as DDH.
DJ: used in Walloon and Catalan for /dʒ/.
GI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican and Romanian to represent /dʒ/ before A, O, or U, and in Romansh to represent [ɟi] or /dʑi/
or (before A, E, O, and U) [ɟ] or /dʑ/
GH: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent /ɡ/ before E or I (including yod /j/), and
in Galician for the voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ħ/ (not standard sound).
GL: used in Romansh before consonants and I and at the end of words for /ʎ/.
GLI: used in Italian and Corsican for /ʎʎ/ and Romansh for /ʎ/.
GN: used in French, some Romance languages in Italy, Corsican and Romansh for /ɲ/, as in champignon; in Italian to represent /ɲɲ/, as in "ogni" or
"lo gnocco".
GU: used before E or I to represent /ɡ/ or /ɣ/ in all Romance languages except Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican, Romansh, and
Romanian, which use GH instead.
IG: used at the end of word in Catalan for /tʃ/, as in maig, safareig or enmig.
IX: used between vowels or at the end of word in Catalan for /ʃ/, as in caixa or calaix.
LH: used in Portuguese and Occitan /ʎ/.
LL: used in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Astur-leonese, Norman and Dgèrnésiais, originally for /ʎ/ which has merged in some cases with /j/.
Represents /l/ in French unless it follows I (i) when it represents /j/ (or /ʎ/ in some dialects). As in Italian, it is used in Occitan for a long /ll/.
L·L: used in Catalan for a geminate consonant /ɫɫ/.
NH: used in Portuguese and Occitan for /ɲ/, used in official Galician for /ŋ/ .
N-: used in Piedmontese and Ligurian for /ŋ/ between two vowels.
NN: used in Leonese for /ɲ/, in Italian for geminate /nn/.
NY: used in Catalan for /ɲ/.
QU: represents /kw/ in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, and Romansh; /k/ in French, Astur-leonese (normally before e or i); /k/ (before e or i) or
/kw/ (normally before a or o) in Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese; /k/ in Spanish (always before e or i).
RR: used between vowels in several languages (Occitan, Catalan, Spanish) to denote a trilled /r/ or a guttural R, instead of the flap /ɾ/.
SC: used before E or I in Italian, Romance languages in Italy as /ʃ/ or /ʃʃ/, in European Portuguese as /ʃs/ and in French, Brazilian Portuguese,
Catalan and Latin American Spanish as /s/ in words of certain etymology (notice this would represent /θ/ in standard peninsular Spanish)
SCH: used in Romansh for [ʃ] or [ʒ], in Italian for /sk/ before E or I, including yod /j/.
SCI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, and Corsican to represent /ʃ/ or /ʃʃ/ before A, O, or U.
SH: used in Aranese Occitan for /ʃ/.
SS: used in French, Portuguese, Piedmontese, Romansh, Occitan, and Catalan for /s/ between vowels, in Italian, Romance languages of Italy, and
Corsican for long /ss/.
TS: used in Catalan for /ts/.
TG: used in Romansh for [c] or [tɕ]. In Catalan is used for /dʒ/ before E and I, as in metge or fetge.
TH: used in Jèrriais for /θ/; used in Aranese for either /t/ or /tʃ/.
TJ: used between vowels and before A, O or U, in Catalan for /dʒ/, as in sotjar or mitjó.
TSCH: used in Romansh for [tʃ].
TX: used at the beginning or at the end of word or between vowels in Catalan for /tʃ/, as in txec, esquitx or atxa.
TZ: used in Catalan for /dz/.
While the digraphs CH, PH, RH and TH were at one time used in many words of Greek origin, most languages have now replaced them with C/QU, F, R
and T. Only French has kept these etymological spellings, which now represent /k/ or /ʃ/, /f/, /ʀ/ and /t/, respectively.
Double consonants
Gemination, in the languages where it occurs, is usually indicated by doubling the consonant, except when it does not contrast phonemically with the
corresponding short consonant, in which case gemination is not indicated. In Jèrriais, long consonants are marked with an apostrophe: s's is a long /zz/,
ss's is a long /ss/, and t't is a long /tt/. The phonemic contrast between geminate and single consonants is widespread in Italian, and normally indicated in
the traditional orthography: fatto /fatto/ 'done' vs. fato /fato/ 'fate, destiny'; cadde /kadde/ 's/he, it fell' vs. cade /kade/ 's/he, it falls'. The double
consonants in French orthography, however, are merely etymological. In Catalan, the gemination of l is marked by a punt volat ("flying point"): l·l.
Diacritics
Romance languages also introduced various marks (diacritics) that may be attached to some letters, for various purposes. In some cases, diacritics are
used as an alternative to digraphs and trigraphs; namely to represent a larger number of sounds than would be possible with the basic alphabet, or to
distinguish between sounds that were previously written the same. Diacritics are also used to mark word stress, to indicate exceptional pronunciation of
letters in certain words, and to distinguish words with same pronunciation (homophones).
Depending on the language, some letter-diacritic combinations may be considered distinct letters, e.g. for the purposes of lexical sorting. This is the case,
for example, of Romanian ș ([ʃ]) and Spanish ñ ([ɲ]).
The following are the most common use of diacritics in Romance languages.
Vowel quality: the system of marking close-mid vowels with an acute accent, é, and open-mid vowels with a grave accent, è, is widely used (e.g.
Catalan, French, Italian). Portuguese, however, uses the circumflex (ê) for the former, and the acute (é), for the latter. Some minority Romance
languages use an umlaut (diaeresis mark) in the case of ä, ö, ü to indicate fronted vowel variants, as in German. Centralized vowels (/ɐ/, /ə/) are
indicated variously (â in Portuguese, ă/î in Romanian, ë in Piedmontese, etc.). In French, Occitan and Romanian, these accents are used whenever
necessary to distinguish the appropriate vowel quality, but in the other languages, they are used only when it is necessary to mark unpredictable
stress, or in some cases to distinguish homophones.
Vowel length: French uses a circumflex to indicate what had been a long vowel (although nowadays this rather indicates a difference in vowel quality,
if it has any effect at all on pronunciation). This same usage is found in some minority languages.
Nasality: Portuguese marks nasal vowels with a tilde (ã) when they occur before other written vowels and in some other instances.
Palatalization: some historical palatalizations are indicated with the cedilla (ç) in French, Catalan, Occitan and Portuguese. In Spanish and several
other world languages influenced by it, the grapheme ñ represents a palatal nasal consonant.
Separate pronunciation: when a vowel and another letter that would normally be combined into a digraph with a single sound are exceptionally
pronounced apart, this is often indicated with a diaeresis mark on the vowel. This is particularly common in the case of gü /ɡw/ before e or i, because
plain gu in this case would be pronounced /ɡ/. This usage occurs in Spanish, French, Catalan and Occitan, and occurred before the 2009 spelling
reform in Brazilian Portuguese. French also uses the diaeresis on the second of two adjacent vowels to indicate that both are pronounced separately,
as in Noël "Christmas" and haïr "to hate".
Stress: the stressed vowel in a polysyllabic word may be indicated with an accent, when it cannot be predicted by rule. In Italian, Portuguese and
Catalan, the choice of accent (acute, grave or circumflex) may depend on vowel quality. When no quality needs to be indicated, an acute accent is
normally used (ú), but Italian and Romansh use a grave accent (ù). Portuguese puts a diacritic on all stressed monosyllables that end in a e o as es
os, to distinguish them from unstressed function words: chá "tea", más "bad (fem. pl.)", sé "seat (of government)", dê "give! (imperative)", mês
"month", só "only", nós "we" (cf. mas "but", se "if/oneself", de "of", nos "us"). Word-final stressed vowels in polysyllables are marked by the grave
accent in Italian, thus università "university/universities", virtù "virtue/virtues", resulting in occasional minimal or near-minimal pairs such as parlo "I
speak" ≠ parlò "s/he spoke", capi "heads, bosses" ≠ capì "s/he understood", gravita "it, s'/he gravitates" ≠ gravità "gravity, seriousness".
Homophones: words (especially monosyllables) that are pronounced exactly or nearly the same way and are spelled identically, but have different
meanings, can be differentiated by a diacritic. Typically, if one of the pair is stressed and the other isn't, the stressed word gets the diacritic, using the
appropriate diacritic for notating stressed syllables (see above). Portuguese does this consistently as part of notating stress in certain monosyllables,
whether or not there is an unstressed homophone (see examples above). Spanish also has many pairs of identically pronounced words distinguished
by an acute accent on the stressed word: si "if" vs. sí "yes", mas "but" vs. más "more", mi "my" vs. mí "me", se "oneself" vs. sé "I know", te "you
(object)" vs. té "tea", que/quien/cuando/como "that/who/when/how" vs. qué/quién/cuándo/cómo "what?/who?/when?/how?", etc. A similar strategy is
common for monosyllables in writing Italian, but not necessarily determined by stress: stressed dà "it, s/he gives" vs. unstressed da "by, from", but also
tè "tea" and te "you", both capable of bearing phrasal stress. Catalan has some pairs where both words are stressed, and one is distinguished by a
vowel-quality diacritic, e.g. os "bone" vs. ós "bear". When no vowel-quality needs distinguishing, French and Catalan use a grave accent: French ou
"or" vs. où "where", French la "the" vs. là "there", Catalan ma "my" vs. mà "hand".
Upper and lower case
Most languages are written with a mixture of two distinct but phonetically identical variants or "cases" of the alphabet: majuscule ("uppercase" or "capital
letters"), derived from Roman stone-carved letter shapes, and minuscule ("lowercase"), derived from Carolingian writing and Medieval quill pen
handwriting which were later adapted by printers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In particular, all Romance languages capitalize (use uppercase for the first letter of) the following words: the first word of each complete sentence, most
words in names of people, places, and organizations, and most words in titles of books. The Romance languages do not follow the German practice of
capitalizing all nouns including common ones. Unlike English, the names of months, days of the weeks, and derivatives of proper nouns are usually not
capitalized: thus, in Italian one capitalizes Francia ("France") and Francesco ("Francis"), but not francese ("French") or francescano ("Franciscan").
However, each language has some exceptions to this general rule.
Vocabulary comparison
The tables below provide a vocabulary comparison that illustrates a number of examples of sound shifts that have occurred between Latin and Romance
languages. Words are given in their conventional spellings. In addition, for French the actual pronunciation is given, due to the dramatic differences
between spelling and pronunciation. (French spelling approximately reflects the pronunciation of Old French, c. 1200 AD.)
Sardinian[69]
Corsican
English Latin Romanian Sicilian[70][71][72] Italian Venetian Ligurian[73] Emilian Lombard Pi

(Nuorese) (Northern)
homō,
man ómine om omu omu uomo om(en)o òmmo òm(en) òm(en) òm
hominem
Domina,
woman, femina, Fémina, femeie, dòna/fomna,
mugghieri donna, moglie donna mujer mogê/dònna mujér fom

wife mulier, muzère muiere miee/moglier
mulierem
son fīlium fízu fiu figghiu figliu/figliolu figlio fio figeu fiōl fiœl fie
water aquam àbba apă acqua acqua acqua acua ægoa aqua aqua/ova/eiva ev
fire focum fócu foc focu focu fuoco fogo fêugo foeugh fœg feu
rain pluviam próida ploaie chiuvuta[80] pioggia pioggia pióva ciêuva pioeuva piœva pie
land terram tèrra țară terra terra terra tera tæra tera terra tèr
sky caelum chélu cer celu celu cielo çiél çê cēl cel ce
high altum àrtu înalt autu altu alto alto èrto élt alt/(v)olt àu
new novum nóbu nou novu novu nuovo nóvo nêuvo noeuv nœv ne
horse caballum càdhu cal cavaddu cavallu cavallo cavało cavàllo cavàl cavall ca
dog canem càne/jàgaru câine cani cane cane can càn can can/ca ca
do facere fàchere face(re) fari/fàciri fà fare far fâ far fà fé
milk lactem làte lapte latti latte latte late læte latt lacc/lat lài
oculum >
eye ócru ochi occhiu ochiu/ochju occhio ocio éugio òć œgg eu
*oclum
auriculam
ear > orícra ureche auricchia orecchiu/orechju orecchio orécia oêgia uréć oregia/orecia or
*oriclam
tongue/
linguam límba limbǎ lingua lingua lingua léngua léngoa léngua lengua len
language
hand manum mànu mână manu manu mano man màn man man/ma ma
skin pellem pèdhe piele peddi pelle pelle pełe pélle pèl pell pe
(mì/mè)[82]
I ego (d)ègo eu eu/jè/ju eiu io (mi)[82] a (mi)[82] a (mi/mé)[82] a (m
a
our nostrum nóstru nostru nostru nostru nostro nostro nòstro noster nòst/nòster nò
tréi (m)/
tri (m)/
three trēs tres trei tri tre tre tre trii trè
træ (f) tre (f)
quattuor
four >
bàtoro patru quattru quattru quattro cuatro quàttro quàtar quàter qu
*quattro
quīnque
five >
chímbe cinci cincu cinque cinque çincue çìnque sinc cinc/sic sin
*cīnque
six sex ses șase sia sei sei sìe sêi siē sex /ses/ se
seven septem sète șapte setti sette sette sete sètte sèt set se
eight octō òto opt ottu ottu otto oto éuto òt vòt/òt eu
nine novem nòbe nouă novi nove nove nove nêuve nóv nœv ne
ten decem dèche zece deci dece dieci diéxe dêxe déś dex /des/ de
Sardinian
Corsican
English Latin Romanian Sicilian Italian Venetian Ligurian Emilian Lombard P

(Nuorese) (Northern)
Degrees of lexical similarity among the Romance languages
Data from Ethnologue:[84]
% Sardinian Italian French Spanish Portuguese Catalan Romansh
Italian 85(a) —
French 80 89 —
Spanish 76 82 75 —
Portuguese 76 80 75 89 —
Catalan 75 87 85 85 85 —
Romansh 74 78 78 74 74 76 —
Romanian 74 77 75 71 72 73 72
See also
Romance languages linguistics
Italo-Celtic
Romance peoples
Legacy of the Roman Empire
Southern Romance
African Romance
British Latin
Moselle Romance
Pannonian Romance
Romance-speaking Africa
Romance-speaking Europe
Romance-speaking world
Notes
1. Herman, József; Wright, Roger (Translator) (2000). Vulgar Latin (https:// 11. Sardos etiam, qui non Latii sunt sed Latiis associandi videntur,
archive.org/details/vulgarlatin00herm). University Park: Pennsylvania eiciamus, quoniam soli sine proprio vulgari esse videntur, gramaticam
State University Press. pp. 96 (https://archive.org/details/vulgarlatin00he tanquam simie homines imitantes: nam domus nova et dominus meus
rm/page/n111)–115. ISBN 0-271-02001-6. locuntur. ["As for the Sardinians, who are not Italian but may be
2. "Catalan" (http://www.ethnologue.com/18/language/cat/). Ethnologue. associated with Italians for our purposes, out they must go, because
Retrieved 14 November 2017. they alone seem to lack a vernacular of their own, instead imitating
gramatica as apes do humans: for they say domus nova [my house] and
3. «Classifications that are not based on family trees usually involve
dominus meus [my master]." (English translation provided by Dante
ranking languages according to degree of differentiation rather than
Online, De Vulgari Eloquentia, I-xi (http://www.danteonline.it/english/ope
grouping them; thus, if the Romance languages are compared with
Latin, it is seen that by most measures Sardinian and Italian are least re2.asp?idcod=000&idope=3&idliv1=1&idliv2=11&idliv3=1&idlang=UK))]
It is unclear whether this indicates that Sardinian still had a two-case
differentiated and French most (though in vocabulary Romanian has
changed most).» Marius Sala; et al. "Romance languages" (https://www. system at the time; modern Sardinian lacks grammatical case.
britannica.com/topic/Romance-languages). Britannica.com. 12. "Dante's Peek" (https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/dante's-pee
k). Online Etymology Dictionary. 2020.
4. Pei, Mario (1949). "A New Methodology for Romance Classification".
WORD. 5 (2): 135–146. doi:10.1080/00437956.1949.11659494 (https:// 13. Jaberg, Karl and Jud, Jakob, Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der
doi.org/10.1080%2F00437956.1949.11659494). Südschweiz, Vol.1-8, Bern: Zofingen, 1928-1940; Karte 1045: QUELLA
VACCA, Karte 342: UNA NOTTE (Online access: [1] (http://www3.pd.ist
5. For example, a 1949 study by Pei, analyzing the degree of difference
c.cnr.it/navigais-web/))
from a language's parent (Latin, in the case of Romance languages) by
comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation, 14. Zhang, Huiying (2015). "From Latin to the Romance languages: A
indicated the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the normal evolution to what extent?" (https://web.archive.org/web/2018011
greater the distance from Latin): Sardinian 8%, Italian 12%, Spanish 9120250/http://oec.xmu.edu.cn/qjcs/upload/201502/201502.pdf) (PDF).
20%, Romanian 23.5%, Occitan 25%, Portuguese 31%, and French Quarterly Journal of Chinese Studies. 3 (4): 105–111. Archived from the
44%. original (http://oec.xmu.edu.cn/qjcs/upload/201502/201502.pdf) (PDF)
on 2018-01-19. Retrieved 2018-01-18.
6. M. Paul Lewis, "Summary by language size (http://www.ethnologue.co
m/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size)", Ethnologue: Languages of the 15. Ruhlen M. (1987). A guide to the world's languages, Stanford University
World, Sixteenth Edition. Press, Stanford.
7. David Dalby (1999). The Linguasphere register of the world's languages 16. Jones, Michael Allan (1990). "Sardinian". In Harris, Martin; Vincent,
and speech communities (http://www.linguasphere.info/lcontao/tl_files/p Nigel (eds.). The Romance Languages (https://books.google.com/book
df/master/OL-SITE%201999-2000%20MASTER%20ONE%20Sectors% s?id=YMQlAQAAIAAJ&q=%22first+century+BC%22). New York: Oxford
205-Zones%2050-54.pdf) (PDF). 2. Oxford, England: Observatoire University Press. pp. 314–350. ISBN 978-0-19-520829-0.
Linguistique, Linguasphere Press. pp. 390–410 (zone 51). Retrieved 17. Loporcaro, Michele (2011). "Phonological Processes". In Maiden; et al.
July 30, 2020. (eds.). The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages: Volume 1,
8. Ilari, Rodolfo (2002). Lingüística Românica. Ática. p. 50. ISBN 85-08- Structures.
04250-7. 18. Ledgeway, Adam; Maiden, Martin (2016). The Oxford Guide to the
9. "romance | Origin and meaning of romance by Online Etymology Romance Languages (https://books.google.com/books?id=uUlRDAAAQ
Dictionary" (https://www.etymonline.com/word/romance). BAJ&dq=lausbergzone+basilicata&pg=PA248). Oxford University Press.
www.etymonline.com. Retrieved 2021-03-30. p. 248ff. ISBN 978-0-19-967710-8.
10. "Romance languages" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508 19. Dalbera-Stefanaggi, Marie-Josée (2002). La langue corse (1st ed.).
379/Romance-languages). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved Paris: Presses universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-052946-0.
2 December 2014. Compare comment 1 at the blog Language Hat (http://languagehat.com/
written-language-quiz/#comment-1722395) and comment 2 (http://langu
agehat.com/written-language-quiz/#comment-2030506).
20. "NEO-ROMANTICISM IN LANGUAGE PLANNING (Edo 44. Ioan-Aurel Pop, "On the Significance of Certain Names:
BERNASCONI)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20150204020228/http://d Romanian/Wallachian and Romania/Wallachia" (http://dspace.bcucluj.r
onh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin.html). Archived from the original o/bitstream/123456789/48209/1/Pop%2bIoan%2bAurel-Despre%2bsem
(http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin.html) on 2015-02-04. nificatia%2bunor%2bnume-2009.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 18 June 2018
21. "NEO-ROMANTICISM IN LANGUAGE PLANNING (Edo 45. Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History, Ohio State University
BERNASCONI)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20150710083231/http://d Press, Columbus, p.13
onh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin2.html). Archived from the original 46. Price, Glanville (1984). The French language: past and present.
(http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin2.html) on 2015-07-10. London: Grant and Cutler Ltd.
22. Peano, Giuseppe (1903). De Latino Sine Flexione. Lingua Auxiliare 47. "Na" is a contraction of "em" (in) + "a" (the), the form "em a" is never
Internationale [2] (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35803/35803-h/35803- used, it is always replaced by "na". The same happens with other
h.htm), Revista de Mathematica (Revue de Mathématiques), Tomo VIII, prepositions: "de" (of) + o/a/os/as (singular and plural forms for "the" in
pp. 74–83. Fratres Bocca Editores: Torino. masculine and feminine) = do, da, dos, das; etc.
23. "Eall fhoil de Bhreathanach" (https://web.archive.org/web/20080610171 48. Verb; literally means "to put in mouth"
257/http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/breath.html). Archived from the
49. Ilona Czamańska, "Vlachs and Slavs in the Middle Ages and Modern
original (http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/breath.html) on June 10,
Era", Res Historica, 41, Lublin, 2016
2008.
50. van Durme, Luc (2002). "Genesis and Evolution of the Romance-
24. Henrik Theiling (2007-10-28). "Þrjótrunn: A North Romance Language:
Germanic Language Border in Europe". In Treffers-Daller, Jeanine;
History" (http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/s_02.html).
Willemyns, Roland (eds.). Language Contact at the Romance–
Kunstsprachen.de. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
Germanic Language Border (http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~rwillemy/229
25. "Relay 10/R – Jelbazech" (http://steen.free.fr/relay10/jelbazech.html). _LanguageContact2002.pdf) (PDF). Multilingual Matters. p. 13.
Steen.free.fr. 2004-08-28. Retrieved 2010-11-06. ISBN 9781853596278.
26. See Portuguese in Africa. 51. Note that the current Portuguese spelling (Portuguese Language
27. See Portuguese in Asia and Oceania. Orthographic Agreement of 1990) abolished the use of the diaeresis for
28. See list of countries where Portuguese is an official language. this purpose.
29. I.S. Nistor, "Istoria românilor din Transnistria" (The history of Romanians 52. Pope (1934).
from Transnistria), București, 1995 53. Rodney Sampson, Vowel Prosthesis in Romance: A Diachronic Study
30. "Reports of about 300,000 Jews who left the country after WW2" (http (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010), 63.
s://web.archive.org/web/20060831192934/http://www.eurojewcong.org/e 54. Allen (2003) states: "There appears to have been no great difference in
jc/news.php?id_article=110). Eurojewcong.org. Archived from the quality between long and short a, but in the case of the close and mid
original (http://www.eurojewcong.org/ejc/news.php?id_article=110) on vowels (i and u, e and o) the long appear to have been appreciably
2006-08-31. Retrieved 2010-11-06. closer than the short." He then goes on to the historical development,
31. 1993 Statistical Abstract (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.as quotations from various authors (from around the second century AD),
p?code=ron) of Israel reports 250,000 speakers of Romanian in Israel, as well as evidence from older inscriptions where "e" stands for
while the 1995 census puts the total figure of the Israeli population at normally short i, and "i" for long e, etc.
5,548,523 55. Technically, Sardinian is one of the Southern Romance languages. The
32. Djuvara Neagu, "La Diaspora aroumaine aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles " In: same vowel outcome occurred in a small strip running across southern
Les Aroumains, Paris : Publications Langues’O, 1989 (Cahiers du Italy (the Lausberg Zone), and is thought to have occurred in the
Centre d’étude des civilisations d’Europe centrale et du Sud-Est; 8). P. Romance languages of northern Africa.
95-125. 56. Palmer (1954).
33. "Encarta Dictionary" (https://web.archive.org/web/20091028112912/htt 57. cauda would produce French **choue, Italian */kɔda/, Occitan **cauda,
p://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryHome.asp Romanian **caudă.
x). Microsoft Encarta 2006. Archived from the original (https://uk.encart 58. Kaze, Jeffery W. (1991). "Metaphony and Two Models for the
a.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/dictionaryhome.aspx) on 2009- Description of Vowel Systems". Phonology. 8 (1): 163–170.
10-28. Retrieved 2009-11-16. doi:10.1017/s0952675700001329 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2Fs0952675
34. "Ethnologue" (http://www.ethnologue.org/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?b 700001329). JSTOR 4420029 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4420029).
y=size). SIL Haley. 3 October 2018. 59. Calabrese, Andrea. "Metaphony" (https://web.archive.org/web/2013092
35. Percy, Thomas (1887). Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting 1053600/http://homepages.uconn.edu/~anc02008/Papers/METAPHON
of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, Etc (https://archive.org/details/reliquesanc Y.pdf) (PDF). Archived from the original (http://homepages.uconn.edu/~
ient20percgoog). Abe Books. p. 289 (https://archive.org/details/reliques anc02008/Papers/METAPHONY.pdf) (PDF) on 2013-09-21. Retrieved
ancient20percgoog/page/n291). 2012-05-15.
36. The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, 60. "ALVARO ARIAS CABAL - Publicaciones" (http://personales.uniovi.es/w
and General Information (https://books.google.com/books?id=SNgOmS eb/ariasal/). personales.uniovi.es.
oaNbgC). 28 (11 ed.). 1957. p. 167. 61. Penny, Ralph (1994). "Continuity and Innovation in Romance:
37. Bereznay, András (2011). Erdély történetének atlasza [Atlas of the Metaphony and Mass-Noun Reference in Spain and Italy". The Modern
History of Transylvania]. Méry Ratio. p. 63. ISBN 978-80-89286-45-4. Language Review. 89 (2): 273–281. doi:10.2307/3735232 (https://doi.or
38. Rochette, p. 550 g/10.2307%2F3735232). JSTOR 3735232 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/
3735232).
39. Stefan Zimmer, "Indo-European," in Celtic Culture: A Historical
Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2006), p. 961 62. Álvaro Arias. "La armonización vocálica en fonología funcional (de lo
sintagmático en fonología a propósito de dos casos de metafonía
40. Curchin, Leonard A. (1995). "Literacy in the Roman Provinces:
hispánica) (https://minerva.usc.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10347/5730/p
Qualitative and Quantitative Data from Central Spain". The American
g_113-142_moenia11.pdf?sequence=1) Archived (https://web.archive.or
Journal of Philology. 116 (3): 461–476 (464). doi:10.2307/295333 (http
g/web/20180119060648/https://minerva.usc.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1
s://doi.org/10.2307%2F295333). JSTOR 295333 (https://www.jstor.org/s
0347/5730/pg_113-142_moenia11.pdf?sequence=1) 2018-01-19 at the
table/295333).
Wayback Machine", Moenia 11 (2006): 111–139.
41. Herman, Jozsef (1 November 2010). Vulgar Latin (https://books.google.
63. Note that the outcome of -am -em -om would be the same regardless of
com/books?id=RJco4ioXigYC). Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0-271-
whether lengthening occurred, and that -im was already rare in
04177-3., pp. 108–115
Classical Latin, and appears to have barely survived in Proto-Romance.
42. Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (2001). Romance Languages. London, The only likely survival is in "-teen" numerals such as trēdecim "thirteen"
England, UK: Routledge. > Italian tredici. This favors the vowel-lengthening hypothesis -im > /ĩː/ >
43. Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History, Ohio State University /i/; but notice unexpected decem > Italian dieci (rather than expected
Press, Columbus, p.12 *diece). It is possible that dieci comes from *decim, which analogically
replaced decem based on the -decim ending; but it is also possible that
the final /i/ in dieci represents an irregular development of some other
sort and that the process of analogy worked in the other direction.
64. The Latin forms are attested; metipsissimus is the superlative of the 75. "Dictionary English–Friulian Friulian–English" (https://web.archive.org/w
formative -metipse, found for example in egometipse "myself in person" eb/20110722053136/http://www.sangiorgioinsieme.it/Diz-friulan-englis
65. Ralph Penny, A History of the Spanish Language, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: h%20.htm). Sangiorgioinsieme.it. Archived from the original (http://www.
Cambridge UP, 2002), 144. sangiorgioinsieme.it/Diz-friulan-english%20.htm) on 2011-07-22.
66. Espinosa, Aurelio M. (1911). "Metipsimus in Spanish and French". Retrieved 2011-07-31.
PMLA. 26 (2): 356–378. doi:10.2307/456649 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2 76. "Lo trèsor arpitan" (http://arpitan.eu/SmartDic).
F456649). JSTOR 456649 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/456649). 77. Beaumont (2008-12-16). "Occitan–English Dictionary" (http://www.freela
67. Formerly ⟨qü⟩ in Brazilian Portuguese ng.net/online/occitan.php?lg=gb). Freelang.net. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
68. Formerly ⟨gü⟩ in Brazilian Portuguese 78. "English Aragonese Dictionary Online" (http://en.glosbe.com/en/an).
Glosbe. Retrieved 2013-09-18.
69. "Ditzionàriu in línia de sa limba e de sa cultura sarda, Regione
Autònoma de sa Sardigna" (https://web.archive.org/web/201710080633 79. "English Asturian Dictionary Online" (http://en.glosbe.com/en/ast).
08/http://ditzionariu.nor-web.eu/#). Archived from the original (https://ditz Glosbe. Retrieved 2013-09-18.
ionariu.nor-web.eu/) on 2017-10-08. Retrieved 2013-09-14. 80. Developed from *pluviūtam.
70. "Sicilian–English Dictionary" (http://italian.about.com/od/sicilian/a/aa050 81. Initial h- due to contamination of Germanic *hauh "high". Although no
405d_3.htm). Italian.about.com. 2010-06-15. Retrieved 2010-11-06. longer pronounced, it reveals its former presence by inhibiting elision of
71. "Dictionary Sicilian – Italian" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090420144 a preceding schwa, e.g. le haut "the high" vs. l'eau "the water".
425/http://utenti.lycos.it/uerreclan_sito/dizionario.htm). Utenti.lycos.it. 82. Cognate with Latin mē, not ego. Note that this parallels the state of
Archived from the original (http://www.utenti.lycos.it/uerreclan_sito/dizio affairs in Celtic, where the cognate of ego is not attested anywhere, and
nario.htm) on 2009-04-20. Retrieved 2010-11-06. the use of the accusative form cognate to mē has been extended to
72. "Indo-European Languages" (http://www.zompist.com/euro.htm). cover the nominative, as well.
Retrieved 2013-09-18. 83. Developed from an assimilated form *nossum rather than from nostrum.
73. "Traduttore Italiano Genovese - TIG" (http://www.zeneize.net/itze/main.a 84. Ethnologue, Languages of the World, 15th edition, SIL International,
sp). 2005.
74. "Grand Dissionari Piemontèis / Grande Dizionario Piemontese" (http://w
ww.piemonteis.com/). Retrieved 2013-09-17.
References
Overviews:
Frederick Browning Agard. A Course in Romance Linguistics. Vol. 1: A Synchronic View, Vol. 2: A Diachronic View. Georgetown University Press,
1984.
Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (1988). The Romance Languages. London: Routledge. Reprint 2003.
Posner, Rebecca (1996). The Romance Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gerhard Ernst et al., eds. Romanische Sprachgeschichte: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Geschichte der romanischen Sprachen. 3 vols. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 2003 (vol. 1), 2006 (vol. 2).
Alkire, Ti; Rosen, Carol (2010). Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith & Adam Ledgeway, eds., The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Vol. 1: Structures, Vol. 2: Contexts.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011 (vol. 1) & 2013 (vol. 2).
Martin Maiden & Adam Ledgeway, eds. The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Lindenbauer, Petrea; Metzeltin, Michael; Thir, Margit (1995). Die romanischen Sprachen. Eine einführende Übersicht. Wilhelmsfeld: G. Egert.
Metzeltin, Michael (2004). Las lenguas románicas estándar. Historia de su formación y de su uso. Uviéu: Academia de la Llingua Asturiana.
Phonology:
Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1980). From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Cravens, Thomas D. Comparative Historical Dialectology: Italo-Romance Clues to Ibero-Romance Sound Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins,
2002.
Sónia Frota & Pilar Prieto, eds. Intonation in Romance. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.
Christoph Gabriel & Conxita Lleó, eds. Intonational Phrasing in Romance and Germanic: Cross-Linguistic and Bilingual studies. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 2011.
Philippe Martin. The Structure of Spoken Language: Intonation in Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016.
Rodney Sampson. Vowel Prosthesis in Romance. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.
Lexicon:
Holtus, Günter; Metzeltin, Michael; Schmitt, Christian (1988). Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik. (LRL, 12 volumes). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
French:
Price, Glanville (1971). The French language: present and past. Edward Arnold.
Kibler, William W. (1984). An introduction to Old French. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Lodge, R. Anthony (1993). French: From Dialect to Standard. London: Routledge.
Portuguese:
Williams, Edwin B. (1968). From Latin to Portuguese, Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Portuguese Language (2nd ed.). University of
Pennsylvania.
Wetzels, W. Leo; Menuzzi, Sergio; Costa, João (2016). The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
Spanish:
Penny, Ralph (2002). A History of the Spanish Language (https://archive.org/details/historyofspanish0000penn) (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lapesa, Rafael (1981). Historia de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.
Pharies, David (2007). A Brief History History of the Spanish Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zamora Vicente, Alonso (1967). Dialectología Española (2nd ed.). Madrid: Editorial Gredos.
Italian:
Devoto, Giacomo; Giacomelli, Gabriella (2002). I Dialetti delle Regioni d'Italia (3rd ed.). Milano: RCS Libri (Tascabili Bompiani).
Devoto, Giacomo (1999). Il Linguaggio d'Italia. Milano: RCS Libri (Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli).
Maiden, Martin (1995). A Linguistic History of Italian. London: Longman.
Rhaeto-Romance:
John Haiman & Paola Benincà, eds., The Rhaeto-Romance Languages. London: Routledge, 1992.
External links
Michael de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Brill, 2008, 826pp. (part available freely online) (https://web.archive.
org/web/20130617111122/http://iedo.brillonline.nl/dictionaries/content/latin/index.html)
Michael Metzeltin, Las lenguas románicas estándar. Historia de su formación y de su uso, Oviedo, 2004 (https://books.google.com/books?id=LRumIF
1TLVkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Las+lenguas+rom%C3%A1nicas+est%C3%A1ndar.+Historia+de+su+formaci%C3%B3n+y+de+su+uso&cd=1#v=on
epage&q&f=false)
Orbis Latinus, site on Romance languages (https://web.archive.org/web/20110202093412/http://orbilat.com/)
Hugh Wilkinson's papers on Romance Languages (https://web.archive.org/web/20110501100652/http://www6.ocn.ne.jp/~wil/)
Spanish is a Romance language, but what does that have to do with the type of romance between lovers? (http://hotword.dictionary.com/romance/),
dictionary.com
Comparative Grammar of the Romance Languages (http://www.nativlang.com/romance-languages/)
Comparison of the computer terms in Romance languages (https://web.archive.org/web/20140727070941/http://neise.0rq.in/180-comparative-list-of-s
ome-computer-terms-in-romance-language)
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12/28/21, 11:28 AM Romance languages - Wikipedia

Judaeo-Spanish .‫ ֵאילייה ֵסיּרה סֵײמּפֵר י לה ֵֿבינטאנה אנֵטיס ֵד י ֵסינאר‬Ella cerra siempre

Centro Cadore: La sera sempre la fenestra gnante de disna.

Gherdëina: Ëila stluj for l viere dan maië da cëina.

(Lé) la sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà.

Romance-based creoles and pidgins

Classification and related languages

Western Proto-Italian Dalmatian Balkan

Galician Portuguese Catalan Occitan

Form ("to Nuorese Languedocien Classical Milanese Bolognese

Infinitive cantāre [kɐ̃ˈtaɾ]

[kanˈtare̞ ] [kanˈtaːre] [kanˈtar] [kanˈta] [kanˈta] [a kɨnˈta] [kaŋˈtɛːr] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]

cantātum [kan [kɐ̃ˈtadu]

participle [kanˈtatu] [kanˈtaːto] [kanˈtat] [kanˈtaː] [kɨnˈtat] [kaŋˈtɛː] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]

Gerund cantandum [kan [kan [kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃du]

[kanˈtande̞ ] [kanˈtan] [kanˈtant] [kɨnˈtɨnd] [kaŋˈtaŋd] [ʃɑ̃ˈtɑ̃]

1sg indic cantō [ˈkɐ̃tu]

[ˈkanto̞ ] [ˈkanto] [ˈkanto̞ ] [ˈkante] [ˈkanti] [ˈkɨnt] [a ˈkaŋt] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

2sg indic cantās [ˈkɐ̃tɐʃ] [ˈkantəs]

[ˈkantaza] [ˈkanti] [ˈkantas] [ˈkantɔs] [ˈkantɛt] [ˈkɨntsʲ] [t ˈkaŋt] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

3sg indic cantat [ˈkantə]

1pl indic cantāmus [kan [kan [kɐ̃ˈtɐmuʃ]

2pl indic cantātis [kɐ̃ˈtajʃ]

[kanˈtate̞ ze̞ ] [kanˈtaːte] [kanˈtajs] [kanˈtats] [kanˈteː(f)] [kɨnˈtatsʲ] [a kaŋˈtɛ:] [ʃɑ̃ˈte]

3pl indic cantant [ˈkantən]

1sg sbjv cantem [ˈkɐ̃tɨ]

[ˈkante̞ ] [ˈkanti] [ˈkante̞ ] [ˈkante] [ˈkantɔ] [ˈkɨnt] [a ˈkaŋtɐ] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

2sg sbjv cantēs [ˈkɐ̃tɨʃ]

[ˈkante̞ ze̞ ] [ˈkanti] [ˈkante̞ s] [ˈkantes] [ˈkantɛt] [ˈkɨntsʲ] [t ˈkaŋt] [ˈʃɑ̃t]

3sg sbjv cantet [ˈkɐ̃tɨ]

1pl sbjv cantēmus [kan [kan [kɐ̃ˈtemuʃ]

2pl sbjv cantētis [kan [kɐ̃ˈtejʃ]

[kanˈte̞ tizi] [kanˈte̞ js] [kanˈtets] [kənˈtɛw]

3pl sbjv cantent [ˈkantən]

Italo-Western vs. Eastern vs. Sardinian

Outcome of Classical Latin vowels

Dialects of southern Italy, Sardinia and Corsica

Gallo-Romance can be divided into the following subgroups:

The Langues d'oïl, including French and closely related languages.

The following groups are also sometimes considered part of Gallo-Romance:

The Occitano-Romance languages of southern France, namely Occitan and Gascon.

Notable characteristics of the Gallo-Romance languages are:

Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages

Antillean (French Antilles, Saint Lucia, Dominica)

Chavacano (in part of Philippines)

Angolar (regional language in São Tomé and Principe)

Auxiliary and constructed languages

Spanish (Hispanosphere) 49% (2nd)

Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Fall of the Eastern Roman empire

Recognition of the vernaculars

Uniformization and standardization

Significant sound changes affected the consonants of the Romance languages.

As a result, only the following final consonants occurred in Vulgar Latin:

The following historical stages occurred:

Stage Environment Consonants affected Result Languages affected

The outcome of palatalized /d/ and /ɡ/ is less clear:

Original /j/ has the same outcome as palatalized /ɡ/ everywhere.