Romance languages

The Romance languages are a special group of languages that all come from old Latin. They are the only living group from the Italic branch of the big Indo-European language family. Today, they are spoken by hundreds of millions of people all around the world.

The five most popular Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. Spanish is mainly spoken in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, and many countries in Hispanic America. Portuguese is the main language in Portugal and Brazil. French is used in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and Haiti. Italian is spoken in Italy and a few other places. Romanian is mainly spoken in Romania and Moldova.

These languages spread around the world because of European exploration and rule that began in the 1400s. Today, there are more than 900 million people who speak Romance languages as their first language, especially in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa. French, Spanish, and Portuguese are also commonly learned by people who speak other languages.

Name and languages

The word Romance comes from an old Latin way of speaking called romanice, which means "in Roman." This was different from speaking in formal Latin, used for writing, and from the languages of people outside the Roman Empire.

Many areas in Europe speak Romance languages. These languages change slowly from one place to another, making it hard to say exactly where one language ends and another begins. Some groups of Romance languages include:

• Ibero-Romance: Portuguese, Galician, Asturleonese (including Mirandese), Spanish, Aragonese, Judaeo-Spanish
• Occitano-Romance: Catalan/Valencian, Occitan
• Gallo-Romance: Oïl languages (including French), Franco-Provençal (Arpitan)
• Rhaeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian
• Gallo-Italic: Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol
• Venetian
• Central Romance: Italian (Tuscan, Corsican, Sassarese), Sicilian, Neapolitan
• Eastern Romance: Daco-Romanian (Romanian), Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian
• Southern Romance: Sardinian (Campidanese, Logudorese)

Modern status

Main articles: Romance-speaking Europe, Latin America, and Latin Union

The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian. These languages cover a large area in Europe and beyond and are official in many countries. In Europe, at least one Romance language is official in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Romania, Moldova, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino and Vatican City.

Spanish is an official language in Spain and nine countries in South America, as well as in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Portuguese is the official language of Portugal and Brazil, and also of several African countries. French is official in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Haiti, and many African nations. Italian is mainly spoken in Italy and Switzerland, while Romanian is spoken mostly in Romania and Moldova.

History

Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Roman Empire helped make Latin the main language in Western Europe. Latin also influenced areas like southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany, Pannonia, and the Balkans.

As the empire weakened and broke apart, different forms of Latin began to change and separate. The western areas were influenced by Germanic tribes like the Goths and Franks, while eastern areas felt Slavic influence. Over time, these changes led to many new languages. The empires of Portugal, Spain, and France later spread their languages around the world, so today many Romance language speakers live outside of Europe.

Even with different influences, all Romance languages come from Vulgar Latin. They have dropped some Latin rules but still share many similarities. Some, like Sardinian and Italian, stay closer to Latin, while French has changed more.

Samples

Romance languages share many words and ways of speaking because they all come from Latin. For example, many of these languages use similar words to say "She always closes the window before she dines."

Some words change their meaning over time. For instance, the Portuguese word fresta comes from the Latin word for "window," but now it means "skylight" or "slit." Other languages might have similar-sounding words that are rarely used or no longer exist.

Different languages sometimes use different words for the same idea, even if they sound similar. This shows how each language has its own special way of speaking.

Classification and related languages

Main article: Classification of Romance languages

The Romance languages are part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. They come from Latin and a few older languages of Italy. It can be hard to sort these languages into groups because they change slowly over areas and sometimes politics affect how we see them. One big split is between Eastern and Western Romance languages, divided by the La Spezia-Rimini line.

The main groups of Romance languages are:

• Italo-Western, which includes languages like Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French.
• Eastern Romance, which includes Romanian and similar languages.
• Southern Romance, which includes Sardinian and Corsican. This group may also include old Romance languages from North Africa.

Some Romance languages have mixed with other languages and created new ones, called creoles. There are many French, Spanish, and Portuguese creoles spoken in places like Haiti, Mauritius, and Cape Verde.

Latin and Romance languages have inspired many made-up languages. The idea started in 1903 with Latino sine flexione by Giuseppe Peano. Other examples include Interlingue-Occidental, Interlingua, and Lingua Franca Nova. These try to use words common to many Romance languages.

Sound changes

Main article: Phonological changes from Classical Latin to Proto-Romance

See also: Vulgar Latin

Consonants

Significant sound changes affected the consonants of the Romance languages.

Apocope

There was a tendency to eliminate final consonants in Vulgar Latin, either by dropping them (apocope) or adding a vowel after them (epenthesis).

Many final consonants were rare, occurring only in certain prepositions (e.g. ad "towards", apud "at, near (a person)"), conjunctions (sed "but"), demonstratives (e.g. illud "that (over there)", hoc "this"), and nominative singular noun forms, especially of neuter nouns (e.g. lac "milk", mel "honey", cor "heart"). Many of these prepositions and conjunctions were replaced by others, while the nouns were regularized into forms 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 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 */meu̯n/, /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 (often 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" Old French aime but Template: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 lost or protected by an epenthetic vowel, except for some articles and a few monosyllabic prepositions con, per, in. Modern Standard Italian still has very few consonant-final words, although Romanian has regained 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 northern 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", crās > crai "tomorrow" (southern Italy). 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" Old French froit /'frwεt/ > froid /fʁwa/, feminine frīgidam > Old French froide /'frwεdə/ > froide /fʁwad/.

Palatalization

Main article: Palatalization in the Romance languages

In Romance languages the term 'palatalization' is used to describe the phonetic evolution of velar stops preceding a front vowel and of consonant clusters involving yod or of the palatal approximant itself. The process involving gestural blending and articulatory reinforcement, starting from Late Latin and Early Romance, generated a new series of consonants in Romance languages.

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. 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 isogloss bundles 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 (such as /t/ and /k/ lost between vowels in French, but /p/ > /v/). 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 have speculated that these sound changes may be due in part to the influence of Continental Celtic languages, while scholarship of the past few decades has proposed internal motivations.

• 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 found only 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. Subsequently, in some languages the voiced forms were further weakened, either becoming fricatives or approximants, [β̞], [ð̞], [ɣ˕] (as in Spanish). 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 and phonemically single [s], although in many languages its spelling has not changed. Double sibilant remains in some languages of Italy, like Italian, Sardinian, and Sicilian.

The sound /h/ was lost but later reintroduced into individual Romance languages. The so-called h aspiré "aspirated h" in French, now completely silent, was a borrowing from Frankish. In Spanish, word-initial /f/ changed to /h/ during its Medieval stage and was lost afterwards (for example farina > harina). Romanian acquired it most likely from the adstrate.

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, car). 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|^{[dubious – discuss]} 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). In Italian the geminates /ʃʃ/, /ɲɲ/, and /ʎʎ/ are pronounced as long [ʃʃ], [ɲɲ], and [ʎʎ] between vowels, but normally reduced to short following pause: lasciare 'let, leave' or la sciarpa 'the scarf' with [ʃʃ], but post-pausal sciarpa with [ʃ].

A few languages have regained secondary geminate consonants. The double consonants of Piedmontese exist only after stressed /ə/, written ë, and are not etymological: vëdde (Latin vidēre, to see), sëcca (Latin sicca, dry, feminine of sech). In standard Catalan and Occitan, there exists a geminate sound /lː/ written ŀl (Catalan) or ll (Occitan), but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech in both languages.

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).

While Western Romance words fused the prosthetic vowel with the word, cognates in Eastern Romance and southern Italo-Romance did not, e.g. Italian scrivere, spada, spirito, Stefano, and stato, Romanian scrie, spată, spirit, Ștefan and stat. In Italian, syllabification rules were preserved instead by vowel-final articles, thus feminine spada as la spada, but instead of rendering the masculine *il stato, lo stato came to be the norm. Though receding at present, Italian once had a prosthetic /i/ maintaining /s/ syllable-final 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' (a form whose survival may have been buttressed in part by the word iscritto Evolution of stressed vowels in early RomanceClassicalSardinianEastern RomanceProto-
RomanceWestern RomanceSicilianAcad.¹RomanIPAIPAIPAIPAīlong i/iː//i//i/ị/i//i//i/ȳlong y/yː/i (ĭ)short i/ɪ//e/į/ɪ//e/y (y̆)short y/ʏ/ēlong e/eː//ɛ/ẹ/e/oeoe/oj/ > /eː/e (ĕ)short e/ɛ//ɛ/ę/ɛ//ɛ//ɛ/aeae/aj/ > /ɛː/ālong a/aː//a//a/a/a//a//a/a (ă)short a/a/o (ŏ)short o/ɔ//ɔ//o/ǫ/ɔ//ɔ//ɔ/ōlong o/oː/ọ/o//o//u/au
(a few words)au/aw/ > /ɔː/u (ŭ)short u/ʊ//u//u/ų/ʊ/ūlong u/uː/ụ/u//u/au
(most words)au/aw//aw//aw/au/aw//aw//aw/¹ Traditional academic transcription in Latin and Romance studies, respectively.

One profound change that affected Vulgar Latin was the reorganisation of its vowel system. Classical Latin had five short vowels, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, and five long vowels, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, each of which was an individual phoneme (see the table in the right, for their likely pronunciation in IPA), and four diphthongs, ae, oe, au and eu (five according to some authors, including ui). There were also long and short versions of y, representing the rounded vowel /y(ː)/ in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced /i(ː)/ even before Romance vowel changes started.

There is evidence that in the imperial period all the short vowels except a differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts. 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 /a aː/ had merged. Soon, however, many of these vowels coalesced:

• The simplest outcome was in Sardinian, where the former long and short vowels in Latin simply coalesced, e.g. /ɛ eː/ > /ɛ/, /ɪ iː/ > /i/: This produced a simple five-vowel system /a ɛ i ɔ 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 /ɔ oː ʊ uː/ evolved as in Sardinian. This produced an unbalanced six-vowel system: /a ɛ e i o u/. In modern Romanian, this system has been significantly transformed, with /ɛ/ > /je/ and with new vowels /ə ɨ/ evolving, leading to a balanced seven-vowel system with central as well as front and back vowels: /a e i ə ɨ o u/.
• Sicilian is sometimes described as having its own distinct vowel system. In fact, Sicilian passed through the same developments as the main bulk of Italo-Western languages. Subsequently, however, high-mid vowels (but not low-mid vowels) were raised in all syllables, stressed and unstressed; i.e. /e o/ > /i u/. The result is a five-vowel /a ɛ i ɔ u/.

Further variants are found in southern Italy and Corsica, which also boasts a completely distinct system.

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), in southern Basilicata, within southern Italy. In this same region, there are also occurrences of a Romanian type vocalism (which could be analyzed as a "compromise" following the Italo-Western system for front vowels and the Sardinian system for back vowels), coexisting alongside occurrences of a unique type vocalism as well (which is instead a "compromise" following the Sicilian system for front vowels and the Sardinian system for back vowels). The Sicilian vowel system, now generally thought to be a development upon the Italo-Western system, is also sporadically represented in parts of southern Italy, such as southern Cilento, southern Salento, but especially in Calabria, and may have been more widespread in the past.

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 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.

Gallurese and Sassarese appear to belong to the southern dialects of Corsica historically, but have a notable Logudorese Sardinian substratum – or adstratum – that is significantly stronger in Sassarese than in Gallurese.

The Proto-Romance allophonic vowel-length system was phonemicized in the Gallo-Romance languages as a result of the loss of many final vowels. Some northern Italian languages (e.g. Friulian) still maintain this secondary phonemic length, but most languages dropped it by either diphthongizing or shortening the new long vowels.

French phonemicized a third vowel length system around AD 1300 as a result of the sound change /VsC/ > /VhC/ > /VːC/ (where V is any vowel and C any consonant). This vowel length began to be lost in Early Modern French, but the long vowels are still usually marked with a circumflex (and continue to be distinguished regionally, chiefly in Belgium). 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/.

Latin diphthongs

The Latin diphthongs ae and oe, pronounced /aj/ and /oj/ in earlier Latin, were early on monophthongized.

ae became /ɛː/ by^{[citation needed]} 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/ 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) 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.^{[citation needed]} 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, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many other minority Romance languages still have /au/ while in Romanian it underwent diaresis like in aurum > aur (a-ur). A few common words, however, show an early merger with ō /oː/, evidently reflecting a generalization of the popular Roman pronunciation:^{[citation needed]} 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. 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 Metaphony (Romance languages)

An early process that operated in all Romance languages to varying degrees was metaphony (vowel mutation), conceptually similar to the umlaut process so characteristic of the Germanic languages. Depending on the language, certain stressed vowels were raised (or sometimes diphthongized) either by a final /i/ or /u/ or by a directly following /j/. Metaphony is most extensive in the Italo-Romance languages, and applies to nearly all languages in Italy; however, it is absent from Tuscan, and hence from standard Italian. In many languages affected by metaphony, a distinction exists between final /u/ (from most cases of Latin -um) and final /o/ (from Latin -ō, -ud and some cases of -um, esp. masculine "mass" nouns), and only the former triggers metaphony.

Some examples:

• In Servigliano in the Marche of Italy, stressed /ɛ e ɔ o/ are raised to /e i o u/ before final /i/ or /u/: /ˈmetto/ "I put" vs. /ˈmitti/ "you put" ( /je we/ except for before certain palatal consonants (which raised the vowels to close-mid before diphthongization took place).
• Eastern Romance languages 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 diphthongization 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/.^{[citation needed]}

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, mɐ̃w̃s/; canem, canēs "dog(s)" > PWR *kane, ˈkanes > *can, ˈcanes > cão, cães /kɐ̃w̃, kɐ̃j̃s/; ratiōnem, ratiōnēs "reason(s)" > PWR *raˈdʲzʲone, raˈdʲzʲones > *raˈdzon, raˈdzones > razão, razões /χaˈzɐ̃w̃, χaˈzõj̃s/ (Brazil), /ʁaˈzɐ̃ũ, 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).

Romanian shows evidence of past nasalization phenomena, the loss of palatal nasal [ɲ] in vie /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

Originally in Proto-Romance, the same nine vowels developed in unstressed as stressed syllables.

In Sardinian, they coalesced into five vowels in the same way as in stressed syllables.

In Italo-Western Romance, they coalesced into seven vowels, as in stressed syllables, but then unstressed low-mid /ɛ ɔ/ merged into the high-mid vowels /e o/, resulting in a five-vowel system in unstressed syllables.

Word-final short -u appears to have been raised to /u/, rather than lowered to /o/. However, it is possible that in reality, final /u/ comes from long *-ū /ʊs/ > /os/, but -um > /ũː/ > /u/.

In final unstressed syllables, most Italo-Western Romance languages show further coalescence, although the original five-vowel system was preserved as-is in some of the more conservative central Italian languages:

• In Tuscan (including standard Italian), /u/ merged into /o/ in final unstressed syllables, producing the four-vowel system of /a e i o/.
• In the Western Romance languages, /i/ eventually merged into /e/ in final unstressed syllables (although /i/ triggered metaphony before that, e.g. Spanish hice, Portuguese fiz "I did" /es/. In many dialects, unstressed /o/ and /u/ merge into /u/ as in Portuguese, and unstressed /a/ and /e/ merge into /ə/. However, some dialects preserve the original five-vowel system, most notably standard Valencian.

Intertonic vowels

The so-called intertonic vowels are word-internal unstressed vowels, i.e. not in the initial, final, or tonic (i.e. stressed) syllable, hence intertonic. Intertonic vowels were the most subject to loss or modification. Already in Vulgar Latin intertonic vowels between a single consonant and a following /r/ or /l/ tended to drop: vétulum "old" > veclum > Dalmatian vieklo, Sicilian vecchiu, Portuguese velho. But many languages ultimately dropped almost all intertonic vowels.

Generally, those languages south and east of the La Spezia–Rimini Line (Romanian and Central-Southern Italian) maintained intertonic vowels, while those to the north and west (Western Romance) dropped all except /a/. Standard Italian generally maintained intertonic vowels, but typically raised unstressed /e/ > /i/. Examples:

• septimā́nam "week" > Italian settimana, Romanian săptămână vs. Spanish/Portuguese semana, French semaine, Occitan/Catalan setmana, Piedmontese sman-a
• quattuórdecim "fourteen" > Italian quattordici, Venetian cuatòrdexe, Lombard/Piedmontese quatòrdes, vs. Spanish catorce, Portuguese/French quatorze
• metipsissimus > medipsimus /medíssimos/ ~ /medéssimos/ "self" > Italian medésimo vs. Venetian medemo, Lombard medemm, Old Spanish meísmo, meesmo (> modern mismo), Galician-Portuguese meesmo (> modern mesmo), Old French meḍisme (> later meïsme > MF mesme > modern même)
• bonitā́tem "goodness" > Italian bonità ~ bontà, Romanian bunătate but Spanish bondad, Portuguese bondade, French bonté
• collocā́re "to position, arrange" > Italian collocare vs. Spanish colgar "to hang", Romanian culca "to lie down", French coucher "to lay sth on its side; put s.o. to bed"
• commūnicā́re "to take communion" > Romanian cumineca vs. Portuguese comungar, Spanish comulgar, Old French comungier
• carricā́re "to load (onto a wagon, cart)" > Portuguese/Catalan carregar vs. Spanish/Occitan cargar "to load", French charger, Italian caricare, Lombard cargà/caregà, Venetian carigar/cargar(e) "to load", Romanian încărca
• fábricam "forge" > /*fawrɡa/ > Spanish fragua, Portuguese frágua, Occitan/Catalan farga, French forge
• disjējūnā́re "to break a fast" > *disjūnā́re > Old French disner "to have lunch" > French dîner "to dine" (but *disjū́nat > Old French desjune "he has lunch" > French (il) déjeune "he has lunch")
• adjūtā́re "to help" > Italian aiutare, Romanian ajuta but French aider, Lombard aidà/aiuttà (Spanish ayudar, Portuguese ajudar based on stressed forms, e.g. ayuda/ajuda "he helps"; cf. Old French aidier "to help" vs. aiue "he helps")

Portuguese is more conservative in maintaining some intertonic vowels other than /a/: e.g. *offerḗscere "to offer" > Portuguese oferecer vs. Spanish ofrecer, French offrir ( 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".

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Writing systems

Main article: Latin script

See also: Palatalization in the Romance languages § Spelling of palatalized consonants

Most Romance languages use the Latin alphabet, adjusting it to fit their sounds. One exception is Romanian, which used a Cyrillic alphabet before the 1800s due to Slavic influence. Another exception was Romanian in the USSR, which also used Cyrillic. Some non-Christian groups in Spain used Arabic or Hebrew scripts to write Romance languages like Judaeo-Spanish and Mozarabic.

Letters

The classical Latin alphabet was changed in several ways to work for Romance languages. The letter V split into V (for consonant sounds) and U (for vowel sounds), and I split into I and J. Letters like K and W are rarely used, mostly for foreign names. Portuguese and Catalan avoid foreign letters more than others.

Most letters kept their sounds, but some changed. H and Q were used in combinations to make new sounds. Languages added marks to letters (diacritics) for extra sounds.

Digraphs and trigraphs

Because Romance languages have more sounds than the Latin alphabet can show, they use digraphs (two letters for one sound) and trigraphs (three letters for one sound). For example:

Diacritics

Romance languages add marks to letters (diacritics) for several reasons: to show different sounds, to mark stress, or to tell apart words that sound the same. Common diacritics include accents and tildes.

Upper and lowercase

Romance languages use both uppercase (like A) and lowercase (like a) letters. They capitalize the first word of sentences, names, and titles, but not all nouns like German does. Months and days of the week are usually not capitalized.

Vocabulary comparison

The tables below show how words have changed from Latin to the modern Romance languages. Some words look very different now, especially in French, where the way words are spelled does not always match how they are said. These changes help us see how languages grow and change over time.

Degrees of lexical similarity among the Romance languages

Data from Ethnologue: