The
Romance languages (sometimes referred to as
Romanic languages,
Latin languages or
Neo-Latin languages) are all the related languages derived from
Vulgar Latin and forming a subgroup of the
Italic languages within the
Indo-European language family. The Romance languages include
Spanish,
Portuguese,
French,
Italian,
Romanian,
Catalan,
Occitan, and
many others.
The Romance languages developed from Latin in the 6th to 9th centuries CE. Today, there are more than 800 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe and the Americas and many smaller regions scattered throughout the world, as well as large numbers of non-native speakers, and widespread use as lingua franca. Because of the extreme difficulty and varying methodology of distinguishing among language, variety, and dialect, it is impossible to count the number of Romance languages now in existence, but the standard count places the number of living Romance languages at almost 25. In fact, the number may be slightly larger, and many more existed previously (SIL ''Ethnologue'' lists 47 Romance languages).
Today the six most widely spoken standardized Romance languages are Spanish (c. 330 million native), Portuguese (c. 205 million native, another 45 million or so second-language speakers, mainly in lusophone Africa), French (c. 70 million native speakers, another 70 million or so second-language speakers, mostly in francophone Africa), Italian (c. 62 million native), Romanian (c. 24 million native), and Catalan (c. 12 million native). Many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers; this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout West Africa as a lingua franca.
Among the numerous other Romance languages are Aragonese, Aromanian, Arpitan, Asturian, Corsican, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Friulan, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Lombard, Mirandese, Neapolitan, Occitan, Piedmontese, Romansh, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian and Walloon.
Origins
Romance languages are the continuation of
Vulgar Latin, the popular
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. Between 350 BC and AD 150,
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, and the Balkans north of the
Jireček Line.
During the Empire's decline, and after its fragmentation and collapse in the 5th century, varieties of Latin began to diverge within each local area at an accelerated rate, and eventually evolved into a continuum of recognizably different typologies. The overseas empires established by Portugal, Spain and France from the 15th century onward spread their languages to the other continents, to such an extent that about two-thirds of all Romance 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 are overwhelmingly evolved forms of Vulgar Latin. However, there are some notable differences 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.
Name
The term "
Romance" comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb ''romanice'', 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). From this adverb the noun ''romance'' originated, which applied initially to anything written ''romanice'', or "in the Roman vernacular".
The word ''romance'' with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular and came to be called "romances".
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:
English: ''She always closes the window before dining.''
:{| cellspacing="3px"
|-
| Latin || ''(illa) claudit semper fenestram antequam cēnat.''
|-
| Aragonese || ''(Ella) zarra siempre a finestra antes de cenar.''
|-
| Aromanian || ''(Ea/Nâsa) încljidi/nkidi totna firida ninti di tsinâ.''
|-
| Asturian || ''(Ella) pieslla siempre la feniestra/ventana enantes de cenar.''
|-
| Bergamasque || ''(Lé) la sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà.''
|-
| Bolognese || ''(Lî) la sèra sänper la fnèstra prémma ed dsnèr.''
|-
| Catalan || ''(Ella) tanca sempre la finestra abans de sopar.''
|-
| Corsican || ''Edda chjudi sempri u balconu prima di cinà.''
|-
| Emilian || ''(Lē) la sèra sèmpar sù la fnèstra prima ad snàr.''
|-
| 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.''
|-
| Friulan || ''(Jê) e siere simpri il barcon prin di cenâ.''
|-
| Galician || ''(Ela) pecha/fecha sempre a fiestra/xanela antes de cear.''
|-
| Italian || ''(Ella/Lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare.''
|-
| Judaeo-Spanish || ''Eya serra syempre la ventana antes de senar.''
|-
| Ladin || ''(Ëra) stlüj dagnora la finestra impröma de cenè.'' (badiot) ''(Ëila) stluj for l viere dan maië da cëina'' (gherdëina)
|-
| Leonese || ''(Eilla) pecha siempre la ventana primeiru de cenare.''
|-
| Ligurian || ''(Le) saera sempre u balcun primma de cenà.''
|-
| Milanese || ''(Le) la sara semper sü la finestra prima de disnà.''
|-
| Mirandese || ''(Eilha) cerra siempre la bentana/jinela atrás de jantar.''
|-
| Mozarabic || ''Ella cloudet sempre la fainestra abante da cenare.'' (reconstructed)
|-
| Neapolitan || ''Essa nzerra sempe 'a fenesta primma 'e magnà.''
|-
| Norman || ''Lli barre tréjous la crouésie devaunt de daîner.''
|-
| Occitan || ''(Ela) barra 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.''
|-
| Romanian || ''Ea închide totdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina.''
|-
| Romansh || ''Ella clauda/serra adina la fanestra avant ch'ella tschainia.''
|-
| Sardinian || ''Issa serrat semper sa bentana innantis 'e chenare.''
|-
| Sassarese || ''Edda sarra sempri lu balchoni primma di zinà.''
|-
| Sicilian || ''Idda chiui sempri la finestra prima di pistiari/manciari.''
|-
| Spanish || ''(Ella) siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar.''
|-
| Umbrian || ''Essa chjude sempre la finestra prima de cena'.''
|-
| Venetian || ''Eła ła sara/sera sempre ła fenestra vanti de xenàr/disnar.''
|-
| Walloon || ''Ele sere todi li finiesse divant di soper.''
|}
Some of the lexical divergence above comes from semantic change: different Romance languages use the same root word with different meaning. Portuguese, for example, has the word ''fresta'', and Spanish ''fenestra''/''finiestra'' (which is a cognate of French ''fenêtre'', Italian ''finestra'', Romanian ''fereastra'' and so on, from Latin ''fenestra'' "window"), however it now means "skylight" and "slit" as opposed to "window." The Spanish and Portuguese terms ''defenestrar'' and ''defenestración/defenestração'' meaning "to throw through a window" or "defenestrate, defenestration", and ''fenestrado'', "replete with windows", also have the same root (but are later derivations 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 actually ''jantar'' (related to archaic Spanish ''yantar'' "to eat") because of semantic changes in the 19th century. Galician has both ''fiestra'' (from medieval ''fẽestra'' which is the ultimate origin of standard Portuguese ''fresta''), and the less frequently used ''ventá'' and ''xanela''.
As an alternative to ''lei'' (originally the accusative 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" (c.f. 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 ''bentana'') 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'').
History
Vulgar Latin
There is a lack of documentary evidence about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of comprehensive research, and the literature is often hard to interpret or generalize upon. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples and forced resettlers, more likely to be natives of conquered lands than natives of Rome.
It is believed that Vulgar Latin already had most of the features that are shared by all Romance languages, which distinguish them from Classical Latin, such as the almost complete loss of the Latin case system and its replacement by prepositions; the loss of the neuter gender, 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/, /g/, and /t/. Some modern languages, such as Finnish, have similar, quite sharp, differences between their printed and spoken form.
To some scholars, this suggests that the form of Vulgar Latin that evolved into the Romance languages was around during the time of the Roman Empire (from the end of 1st century BC), and was spoken alongside the written Classical Latin which was reserved for official and formal occasions. Other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language.
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 the Germanic and
Slavic tribes, as well as by the
Huns, which isolated the
Vlachs from the rest of
Latin Europe.
British Romance and African Romance, the forms of Vulgar Latin used in southeastern Britain and the Roman province of Africa, where it had been spoken by much of the urban population, disappeared in the Middle Ages. But the Germanic tribes that had penetrated Italy, Gaul, and Hispania eventually adopted Latin and the remnants of Roman culture, and so Latin remained the dominant language there.
Latent incubation
Between the fifth and tenth centuries, the dialects of spoken Vulgar Latin diverged in various parts of their domain, eventually becoming distinct languages. This evolution is poorly documented because the
literary language,
Medieval Latin, remained close to the older Classical Latin.
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.
Uniformization and standardization
The invention of the
printing press apparently slowed down the evolution of Romance languages from the 16th century on, and 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.
Modern status
The Romance language
most widely spoken natively today is
Spanish (
Castilian), followed by
Portuguese,
French,
Italian,
Romanian, and
Catalan, all of which are
official languages in at least one country. A few other languages have official status on a regional or otherwise limited level, for instance
Friulan,
Sardinian and
Franco-Provençal in Italy;
Romansh in Switzerland; and
Galician in Spain.
French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of the European Union. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan are the official languages of the 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 their respective colonial empires. French is one of the official languages of Canada, many countries in Africa, and some islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. It is also the sole official language of Quebec.
Spanish is an official language of Mexico, much of South America, Central America, the islands of the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean (except in Haiti where the official languages are French and Haitian Kreyol, a French creole, and Jamaica, where English and Jamaican Patois are spoken.), and it is the official language of Equatorial Guinea in Africa and is the most spoken Romance language in the world.
Portuguese is the official language of Brazil (reaching almost 190 million, it is the language spoken by half of population of South America that resides in Brazil), five African countries (Angola, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé e Príncipe), and East Timor and Macau in Asia and is the second most spoken Romance language.
Although Italy also had some colonial possessions, its language did not remain official after the end of the colonial domination, resulting in Italian being spoken only as a minority or secondary language by immigrant communities in North, South America, Australia, and African countries like Libya, Eritrea and Somalia. Romania did not establish a colonial empire, but the language is spoken as a native language in Moldova, while it also spread to other countries in rest of Europe, especially the other Romance countries (most notably Italy and Spain), and elsewhere such as Israel, where it is a native language to 5% of the population, and by many more as a secondary language; this is due to the large numbers of Romanian-born Jews who moved to Israel after World War II.
The total native speakers of Romance languages are divided as follows (with their ranking within the languages of the world in brackets):
Spanish (Hispanosphere) 47% (2nd)
Portuguese (Lusosphere) 26% (6th)
French (Francophonie) 11% (11th)
Italian 9% (18th)
Romanian 4% (34th)
Catalan 1% (75th)
Others 2%
Catalan is unusual in that it is not the main language of any nation-state other than Andorra, but nonetheless has been able to compete and even gain speakers at the expense of the dominant language of its primary nation (Spanish); in fact, Catalan is probably the only minority European language whose survival is not under threat.
This is due to a strong belief that the Catalan language is a critical component of the ethnic identity of the Catalan people. This has allowed them to resist the assimilationist urges that are in the process of destroying most of the remaining minority-language communities, even those that have strong government support (e.g. Irish language speakers).
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, characterizing 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" (most of the Occitan varieties).
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities have 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.
Classification and related languages
The classification of the Romance languages is inherently difficult, since most of the linguistic area can be considered a dialect continuum, and in some cases political biases can come into play. Nevertheless, according to SIL counts, 47 Romance languages and dialects are spoken in Europe. 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.
Note that Dalmatian is now generally grouped under Proto-Italian rather than Eastern Romance.
Proposed divisions
{|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin:10px; font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode;"
|+Extent of variation in development (very conservative to very innovatory)
|-
! Form("to sing") !! Latin !! NuoreseSardinian !! Spanish !! Portuguese !! Romanian !! French
|-
| Infinitive || cantāre || || || || ||
|-
| Past Part. || cantātum || || || || ||
|-
| Gerund || cantandō || || || || ||
|-
| 1sg. indic. || cantō || || || || ||
|-
| 2sg. indic. || cantās || || || || ||
|-
| 3sg. indic. || cantat || || || || ||
|-
| 1pl. indic. || cantāmus || || || || ||
|-
| 2pl. indic. || cantātis || || || || ||
|-
| 3pl. indic. || cantant || || || || ||
|-
| 1sg. subj. || cantem || || || || ||
|-
| 2sg. subj. || cantēs || || || || ||
|-
| 3sg. subj. || cantet || || || || ||
|-
| 1pl. subj. || cantēmus || || || || ||
|-
| 2pl. subj. || cantētis || || || || ||
|-
| 3pl. subj. || cantent || || || || ||
|-
| 2sg. impv. || cantā || || || || ||
|-
| 2pl. impv. || cantāte || || || || ||
|-
|}
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 Balkans; "West" includes the languages of Portugal, Spain, France, northern Italy and Switzerland. Sardinian does not easily fit in this scheme.
#"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 1st century BC. Dante famously denigrated the Sardinians for the conservativeness of their speech, remarking that they imitate Latin "like monkeys imitate men".
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 archaic features, such as Sardinian and, partially, Corsican. This family is thought to have included the now-vanished Romance languages of Africa (or at least, they appear to have evolved their vowels in the same way).
The three-way division is made primarily based on the outcome of Vulgar Latin (Proto-Romance) vowels:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center; margin:10px;"
|+Outcome of Classical Latin vowels
! Classical Latin !! Proto-Romance !! Italo-Western !! Eastern Romance !! Southern Romance
|-
| short A || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2|
|-
| long A
|-
| short E || || || || rowspan=2|
|-
| long E || || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2|
|-
| short I || || rowspan=2|
|-
| long I || || ||
|-
| short O || || || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2|
|-
| long O || || rowspan=2|
|-
| short U || || rowspan=2| || rowspan=2|
|-
| long 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:
#Lenition of intervocalic stops, which happens to the northwest but not to the southeast.
#Degemination of geminate stops (producing new intervocalic 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 in the northwest vs. in the southeast.
#Development of , which develops to > (sometimes progressing further to ) in the northwest but in the southeast.
In fact, 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 and the Rhaeto-Romance languages of Switzerland and Italy 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 instead of for palatalized /k/.
The
Venetian language in northeast Italy and some of the Rhaeto-Romance languages have the "southeast" characteristic of developing to .
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 . 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 (although this is possibly a independent, secondary development, since /k/ between vowels, i.e. when subject to lenition, developed to /dz/ rather than , 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 completely 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 . (Gemination is missing, which may be an independent development, and /kt/ develops into /pt/ rather than either of the normal Italo-Western developments.) This has led some researchers to postulate a basic two-way East-West division, with the "Eastern" languages including Romanian and central and southern Italian.
Sardinian does not fit into this picture at all. It is clear that Sardinian became linguistically independent from the remainder of the Romance languages at an extremely early date, possibly already by the 1st century BC. Sardinian contains a large number of archaic features, including total lack of palatalization of /k/ and /g/ and a large amount of vocabulary preserved nowhere else, including some items already archaic by the time of Classical Latin (1st century BC).
Sardinian has plurals in /s/ but no lenition of voiceless consonants (at least in most conservative Nuorese dialects) and a number of innovations unseen elsewhere: most famously, its unique vowel system, but also development of /au/ to /a/, a peculiar sort of lenition that operates as a synchronic feature, and use of ''su'' < ''ipsum'' as an article (another archaic feature, also seen in the Catalan of the Balearic Islands).
Gallo-Romance languages
The Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovatory (least conservative) among all the Romance languages. Northern France — the medieval area of the
langue d'oïl, out of which modern French developed — was the epicenter. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed earliest and appear in their most extreme manifestation in the langue d'oïl, gradually spreading out from there along riverways and transalpine roads. It is not coincidental that the earliest vernacular Romance writing occurred in Northern France: Generally, the development of vernacular writing in a given area was forced by the almost total inability of Romance speakers to understand the Classical Latin that still served as the vehicle of writing and culture.
Gallo-Romance languages as a whole are usually characterized by the loss of all unstressed final vowels other than (most significantly, final and were lost). However, when the loss of a final vowel would result in an impossible final cluster (e.g. ), a prop vowel appears in place of the lost vowel, usually . Generally, the same changes also occurred in final syllables closed by a consonant.
Furthermore, loss of in a final syllable was early enough in Primitive Old French that the Classical Latin third-singular was often preserved, e.g. ''venit'' "he comes" > (Romance vowel changes) > (diphthongization) > (lenition) > (Gallo-Romance final vowel loss) > (final devoicing). Elsewhere, final vowel loss occurred later and/or unprotected was lost earlier (perhaps under Italian influence).
Gallo-Romance is divided four ways:
The Occitano-Romance languages of southern France and northern Spain, including Occitan and Catalan. The southern members of this group are the most conservative among all Gallo-Romance, with Catalan the most conservative of all. However, the group is known for an innovatory ending on many subjunctive and preterite verbs, and an unusual development of (Latin intervocalic -d-), which in many varieties merges with (from intervocalic palatalized -c- and -ty-). The inclusion of Catalan in this group (and in the Gallo-Romance languages as a whole) is disputed, with some preferring to group it with the Ibero-Romance languages: This reflects the fact that in its early development, Catalan was closely associated with the Occitan dialects but became linguistically independent by the 10th century or so, with further influence coming from Spain.
The Langues d'oïl, most notably French but also including Franco-Provençal.
The Gallo-Italian languages of northern Italy, including Piedmontese, Ligurian, Western Lombard, Eastern Lombard, and Emiliano-Romagnolo.
The Rhaeto-Romance languages, including various languages of the southeast Swiss mountains as well as the northeast Italian languages of Ladin and Friulian. This is a diverse group, with the Swiss languages taking after the langues d'oïl and the Italian languages taking after the nearby Italo-Romance languages.
Other than southern Occitano-Romance, the Gallo-Romance languages are quite innovatory, with French and some of the Gallo-Italian languages rivaling each other for the most extreme phonological changes compared with conservative languages. For example, French ''sain, saint, sein, ceint, ceint'' meaning "healthy, holy, breast, (he) girds, (was) girded" (Latin ''sānum'', ''sanctum'', ''sinum'', ''cinget'', ''cinctum'') are all pronounced ; similarly ''cent, sent, sans, sang'' meaning "hundred, (he) feels, without, blood" (Latin ''centum'', ''sentit'', ''(ab)sentis'', ''sanguen'') are all pronounced .
In some ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative. The older stages of many of the languages are famous for preserving 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 cases and preserving a number of different declensional classes and irregular forms.
In the opposite of the normal pattern, the languages closest to the oïl epicenter preserve the case system the best, while languages at the periphery — near to languages that had long before lost the case system except on pronouns — lose it early. For example, the case system is well-preserved in Old Occitan up through the 13th century or so but is totally lost in Old Catalan at the time, despite being virtually the same language at the time.
{|class="wikitable" style="float: left; margin:10px"
|+Extensive reduction in French: ''sapūtum'' > ''su'' "known"
! Language !! Change !! Form !! Pronun.
|-
| Vulgar Latin || -- || ''saˈpūtum'' ||
|-
| Western Romance || vowel changes, first lenition || ||
|-
| Gallo-Romance || loss of final vowels || ||
|-
| pre-French || second lenition, loss of length || ||
|-
| || loss of /v/ near rounded vowel || ||
|-
| early Old French || fronting of /u/ || ''seüṭ'' ||
|-
| Old French || loss of dental fricatives || ''seü'' ||
|-
| French || collapse of hiatus || ''su'' ||
|}
{|class="wikitable" style="float: left; margin:10px"
|+Extensive reduction in French: ''vītam'' > ''vie'' "life"
! Language !! Change !! Form !! Pronun.
|-
| Vulgar Latin || -- || ''vītam'' ||
|-
| Western Romance || vowel changes, first lenition || ||
|-
| early Old French || second lenition, loss of length, final /a/ to /ə/ || ''viḍe'' ||
|-
| Old French || loss of dental fricatives || ''vie'' ||
|-
| French || loss of final schwa || ''vie'' ||
|}
Notable characteristics of the Gallo-Romance languages are:
Early loss of all final vowels other than — the defining characteristic, as noted above.
Further reductions of final vowels in Langue d'oïl and many Gallo-Italic languages, with the feminine and prop vowel merging into , which is often subsequently dropped.
Early, heavy reduction of unstressed vowels in the interior of a word (another defining characteristic). This, along with final vowel reduction, accounts for the lion's share of the extreme phonemic differences between the Northern and Central Italian dialects, which otherwise share a great deal of vocabulary and syntax.
Loss of final vowels phonemicized the long vowels that formerly were 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 four branches. usually fronts to , and secondary mid front rounded vowels often develop from long and/or .
Extreme lenition (i.e. multiple rounds of lenition) occurs in many languages esp. in
Langue d'oïl and many
Gallo-Italian languages. Examples from French: ''ˈvītam'' > ''vie'' "life"; *''saˈpūtum'' > ''su'' "known"; similarly ''vu'' "seen" < *''vidūtum'', ''pu'' "been able" < *''potūtum'', ''eu'' "had" < *''habūtum''.
The
Langue d'oïl, Swiss
Rhaeto-Romance languages and many of the northern dialects of Occitan have a secondary
palatalization of and before , producing different results from the primary Romance palatalization: e.g. ''centum'' "hundred" > ''cent'' , ''cantum'' "song" > ''chant'' .
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.
The Gallo-Italian and Italian Rhaeto-Romance languages have a number of features in common with the other Italian languages:
Loss of final , which triggers raising of the preceding vowel (more properly, the "debuccalizes" to , which is monophthongized into a higher vowel), e.g. -> , -> , hence Standard Italian plural ''cani'' < ''canes'', subjunctive ''tu canti'' < ''tu cantes'', indicative ''tu cante'' < ''tu cantas'' (now ''tu canti'' in Standard Italian, borrowed from the subjunctive); ''amiche'' "female friends" < ''amicas''.
Use of nominative ''-i'' for masculine plurals instead of accusative ''-os''.
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. It is not always clear whether they should be classified as Romance,
pidgins,
creole languages, or
mixed languages. Some other languages, such as
English, are
sometimes thought of as creoles of semi-Romance ancestry. There are several dozens of creoles of
Portuguese,
Swahili,
Spanish and
French origin, some of them spoken as
national languages in former European colonies.
Creoles of French:
Haitian Creole (Haiti official language)
Kweyol (French Antilles)
Seselwa (Seychelles official language)
Creoles of Spanish:
Chavacano (in part of Philippines)
Palenquero (in part of Colombia)
Creoles of Portuguese:
Kabuverdianu (Cape Verde regional language)
Forro (São Tomé and Príncipe regional language)
Papiamento (Dutch Antilles official language)
Auxiliary and constructed languages
Latin and the Romance languages have also served as the inspiration and basis of numerous auxiliary and constructed languages, such as
Interlingua, its reformed version Modern Latin,
Latino sine flexione,
Occidental, and
Lingua Franca Nova, as well as 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 (mirrors
Irish),
Wenedyk (mirrors
Polish), Þrjótrunn (mirrors
Icelandic), and Helvetian (mirrors
German).
Linguistic features
Basic features
Romance languages have a number of shared features across all languages:
Romance languages are moderately inflecting, i.e. there is a moderately complex system of affixes (primarily suffixes) that are attached to words to convey grammatical information such as number, gender, person, tense, etc. Verbs have much more inflection than nouns. The amount of ''synthesis'' is significantly more than English, but less than Classical Latin and much less than the oldest Indo-European languages (e.g. Ancient Greek, Sanskrit). Inflection is fusional, with a single morpheme representing multiple features (as contrasted with agglutinative languages such as Turkish or Japanese). For example, Portuguese ''amei'' "I loved" is composed of ''am-'' "love" and the fusional morpheme ''-ei'' "first person, singular, preterite tense, indicative".
Romance languages have a fairly strict subject–verb–object word order, with predominant use of head-first (right-branching) constructions. Adjectives, genitives and relative clauses all follow their head noun, although (except in Romanian) determiners usually precede.
In general, nouns, adjectives and determiners inflect only according to grammatical gender (masculine or feminine) and grammatical number (singular or plural). Grammatical case is marked only on pronouns, as in English; case marking, as in English, is of the nominative–accusative type (rather than e.g. the ergative–absolutive marking of Basque or the split ergativity of Hindi). A significant exception, however, is Romanian, with two-case marking (nominative/accusative vs. genitive/dative) on nominal elements.
Verbs are inflected according to a complex morphology that marks person, number (singular or plural), tense, mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), and sometimes aspect and/or gender. Grammatical voice (active, passive, middle/reflexive) and some grammatical aspects (in particular, the perfect aspect) are expressed using periphrastic constructions.
Most Romance languages are null subject languages (but modern French is not, as a result of the phonetic decay of verb endings).
All Romance languages have two articles (definite and indefinite), and many have in addition a partitive article (expressing the concept of "some"). In some languages (notably, French), the use of an article with a noun is nearly obligatory; it serves to express grammatical number (no longer marked on most nouns) and to cope with the extreme homophony of French vocabulary as a result of extensive sound reductions.
The phonology of most Romance languages is of moderate size with few unusual phonemes. Phonemic vowel length is uncommon. Some languages have developed nasal vowels and/or front rounded vowels.
Word accent is of the stress (dynamic) type, rather than making use of pitch (as in Ancient Greek and some modern Slavic languages), and is free, occurring more or less unpredictably on one of the last three syllables. In practice, the stress is largely predictable, due to the many morphological and phonological stress-related patterns.
Changes from Classical Latin
; Case system
The most significant changes between
Classical Latin and
Proto-Romance (and hence all the modern Romance languages) relate to the reduction and loss of the Latin
case system, and the corresponding syntactic changes that were triggered.
The case system was drastically reduced from the vigorous six-case system of Latin. Although four cases can be constructed for Proto-Romance nouns (nominative, accusative, combined genitive/dative, and vocative), the vocative is marginal and present only in Romanian (where it may be an outright innovation), and of the remaining cases, no more than two are present in any one language. Romanian is the only modern Romance language with case marking on nouns, with a two-way opposition between nominative/accusative and genitive/dative. Some of the older Gallo-Romance languages (in particular, Old French, Old Occitan and Old Sursilvan) had an opposition between nominative and general oblique.
The system of multiple noun declensions was also dramatically reduced; most modern languages have only three types (masculine ''-o'', feminine ''-a'', and an ''-e'' that can be either gender). As in English, case is preserved better on pronouns than elsewhere, with some pronouns marked for as many as four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) plus additional possessive and disjunctive forms.
Concomitant with the loss of cases, freedom of word order was greatly reduced. Classical Latin had a generally verb-final (SOV) but overall quite free word order, with a significant amount of word scrambling and mixing of left-branching and right-branching constructions. The Romance languages eliminated word scrambling and nearly all left-branching constructions, with most languages developing a rigid SVO, right-branching syntax. (Old French, however, had a freer word order due to the two-case system still present, as well as a predominantly verb-second word order developed under the influence of the Germanic languages.)
Some freedom, however, is allowed in the placement of adjectives relative to their head noun. In addition, some languages (e.g. Spanish, Romanian) have an "accusative preposition" (Romanian ''per'', Spanish "personal ''a''") along with clitic doubling, which allows for some freedom in ordering the arguments of a verb.
The Romance languages developed grammatical articles where Latin had none. Articles are often introduced around the time a robust case system falls apart in order to disambiguate the remaining case markers (which are usually too ambiguous by themselves) and to serve as parsing clues that signal the presence of a noun (a function formerly served by the case endings themselves).
This was the pattern followed by the Romance languages: In the Romance languages that still preserved a functioning nominal case system (e.g. Romanian and Old French), only the combination of article and case ending serves to uniquely identify number and case (compare the similar situation in modern German). All Romance languages have a definite article (originally developed from ''ipse'' "self" but replaced in nearly all languages by ''ille'' "that (over there)") and an indefinite article (developed from ''ūnus'' "one"). Many also have a partitive article (''dē'' "of" + definite article).
Latin had a large number of syntactic constructions expressed through infinitives, participles, and similar nominal constructs. Examples are the ablative absolute, the accusative-plus-infinitive construction used for reported speech, gerundive constructions, and the common use of reduced relative clauses expressed through participles. All of these are replaced in the Romance languages by subordinate clauses expressed with finite verbs, making the Romance languages much more "verbal" and less "nominal" than Latin. Under the influence of the Balkan sprachbund, Romanian has progressed the furthest, largely eliminating the infinitive. (It is currently being revived, however, due to the increasing influence of other Romance languages.)
;Other changes
Loss of phonemic vowel length, and change into a free-stressed language. Classical Latin had an automatically determined stress on the second or third syllable from the end, conditioned by vowel length; once vowel length was neutralized, stress was no longer predictable so long as it remained where it was (which it mostly did).
Development of a series of palatal consonants as a result of palatalization.
Loss of most traces of the neuter gender.
Development of a series of analytic perfect tenses, comparable to English "I have done, I had done, I will have done".
Loss of the Latin synthetic passive voice, replaced by an analytic construction comparable to English "it is/was done".
Loss of deponent verbs, replaced by active-voice verbs.
Replacement of the Latin future tense with a new tense formed (usually) by a periphrasis of infinitive + present tense of ''habēre'' "have", which usually contracts into a new synthetic tense. A corresponding conditional tense is formed in the same way but using one of the past-tense forms of ''habēre''.
Numerous lexical changes. A number of words were borrowed from the Germanic languages and Celtic languages. Many basic nouns and verbs, especially those that were short and/or had irregular morphology, were replaced by longer derived forms with regular morphology. Throughout the medieval period, words were borrowed from Classical Latin in their original form (''learned words'') or in something approaching the original form (''semi-learned words''), often replacing the popular forms of the same words.
Phonology
Vowels
Every language has a different set of vowels from every other. Common characteristics are as follows:
Most languages have at least five
monophthongs . The parent language of most of the
Italo-Western Romance languages (which includes the vast majority) actually had a seven-vowel system , which is kept in most Italo-Western languages. In some languages, like Spanish and Romanian, the phonemic status and difference between open-mid and close-mid vowels was lost. French has probably the largest inventory of monophthongs, with conservative varieties having 12
oral vowels and 4
nasal vowels .
Portuguese also has a large inventory, with 8~9 oral monophthongs , with the last one only occurring in European Portuguese, 5 nasal monophthongs , and a large number of oral and nasal diphthongs (see below). developed as the allophone of before nasals and under low stress, and the two are still nearly in complementary distribution. As for European Portuguese, a few minimal pairs like ''falamos'' "we speak" vs. ''falámos'' "we spoke" seem to clearly indicate that must be a phoneme, but other analyses are possible. , which developed from earlier in unstressed syllables is very doubtful.
Some languages have a large inventory of
falling diphthongs. These may or may not be considered as phonemic units (rather than sequences of vowel+glide), depending on their behavior. As an example, French, Spanish and Italian have occasional instances of putative
falling diphthongs formed from a vowel plus a non syllabic or (e.g. Spanish ''veinte'' "twenty", ''deuda'' "debt"; French ''paille'' "straw", ''caoutchouc'' "rubber"; Italian ''lui'' "he", ''potei'' "I could"), but these are normally analyzed as sequences of vowel and glide. The diphthongs in Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan and Occitan, however, have various properties suggesting that they are better analyzed as unit phonemes. Portuguese, for example, has the diphthongs , where (and to a lesser extent ) appear only in some dialects. All except appear frequently in verb and/or noun inflections. (Portuguese also has nasal diphthongs; see below.)
Among the major Romance languages, Portuguese and French have
nasal vowel phonemes, stemming from nasalization before a
nasal consonant followed by loss of the consonant (this occurred especially when the nasal consonant was not directly followed by a vowel). Originally, vowels in both languages were nasalized before ''all'' nasal consonants, but have subsequently become denasalized before nasal consonants that still remain (except in
Brazilian Portuguese, where the pre-nasal vowels in words such as ''cama'' "bed", ''menos'' "less" remain highly nasalized). In Portuguese, nasal vowels are sometimes analyzed as phonemic sequences of oral vowels plus an underlying nasal consonant, but such an analysis is difficult in French because of the existence of minimal pairs such as ''bon'' "good (masc.)", ''bonne'' "good (fem.)". In both languages, there are fewer nasal than oral vowels. Nasalization triggered vowel lowering in French, producing the 4 nasal vowels (although most speakers nowadays pronounce as ). Vowel raising was triggered in Portuguese, however, producing the 5 nasal vowels . Vowel contraction and other changes also resulted in the Portuguese nasal diphthongs (of which occurs in only one word, ''muito'' "much, many, very", and is actually a final-syllable allophone of ).
Most languages have fewer vowels in unstressed syllables than stressed syllables. This again reflects the Italo-Western Romance parent language, which had a seven-vowel system in stressed syllables (as described above) but only (with no low-mid vowels) in unstressed syllables. Some languages have seen further reductions: e.g. Standard Catalan has only in unstressed syllables. French, on the other hand, now allows all 12 of its phonemic vowels to occur either stressed or unstressed.
Most languages have even fewer vowels in final unstressed syllables than elsewhere. For example, the early stages of most Western Romance languages allowed only . Some of these languages now allow more: Spanish, for example, now allows all five of its vowels to occur in final unstressed syllables, but only occur in a few borrowed words, e.g. ''tribu'' "tribe", ''taxi'' "taxi". The
Gallo-Romance languages went even farther, merging final , and French has carried things to the logical extreme by deleting all post-stressed vowels and uniformly placing the stress on the final syllable (except for a more-or-less non-phonemic final unstressed that occasionally appears).
Phonemic vowel length is uncommon. Vulgar Latin lost the phonemic vowel length of Classical Latin and replaced it with a non-phonemic length system where stressed vowels in open syllables were long, and all other vowels were short. Standard Italian still maintains this system, and it was rephonemicized in the Gallo-Romance languages (including the Rhaeto-Romance languages) as a result of the deletion of many final vowels. Some northern Italian languages (e.g. Friulan) still maintain this secondary phonemic length, but in most languages the new long vowels were either diphthongized or shortened again, in the process eliminating phonemic length. French is again the odd man out: Although it followed a normal Gallo-Romance path by diphthongizing five of the seven long vowels and shortening the remaining two, it phonemicized a third vowel length system around 1300 AD in syllables formerly closed with an /s/ (still marked with a circumflex accent), and now is in the process of phonemicizing a fourth system as a result of lengthening before final voiced fricatives.
Consonants
Most Romance languages have similar sets of consonants. The following is a combined table of the consonants of the five major Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian).
Key:
bold: Appears in all 5 languages.
''italic'': Appears in 3-4 languages.
(paren): Appears in 2 languages.
((double paren)): Appears in only 1 language.
Notable changes:
Spanish has no voiced fricatives. The equivalent of /v/ merged with /b/, and all the rest became voiceless. Spanish also lost /ʃ/, which became /x/.
The western languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese) all used to have the affricates /ts/, /dz/, , . By the 14th century or so, these all turned into fricatives except for Spanish (Spanish /ts/ ended up becoming , at least in Northern and Central Spain; elsewhere, it merged with /s/, as in the other languages.) Romanian /dz/ likewise became /z/.
French, and recently Spanish, have lost /ʎ/ (which merged with /j/). Romanian merged /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ into /j/.
Most instances of most of the sounds below that occur (or used to occur, as described above) in all of the languages are cognate. However:
Although all of the languages had or used to have , almost none of these sounds are cognate between pairs of languages. The only real exception is many between Italian and Romanian, stemming from Latin C- before E or I. Italian also has from Vulgar Latin -CY- and supported -TY- (elsewhere /ts/). Former French is from initial or supported Latin C- before A; Spanish is from Latin -CT-; former Portuguese is from initial or supported Latin PL, CL, FL.
Italian and former Romanian /dz/ (from some instances of Vulgar Latin -DY-) are not cognate with former western /dz/ (from lenition of /ts/).
| +Romance consonants
| !
|
!colspan=2 |
!colspan=2 |
!colspan=2 |
Dental consonant |
!colspan=2 |
!colspan=2 |
[[velar consonant |
Glottal
|
| !
|
Voiceless !! Voiced
| ! Voiceless !! Voiced
|
! Voiceless !! Voiced
|
! Voiceless !! Voiced
|
! Voiceless !! Voiced
|
! Voiceless !! Voiced
|
! Voiceless !! Voiced
|
! Voiceless
|
| Nasal stop>Nasal
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
''''
|
|
|
| plosive consonant>Plosive
|
|
|
|
|
style="text-align:center;" | |
|
|
|
style="text-align:center;" | |
|
|
| affricate consonant>Affricate
|
|
|
|
style="text-align:center;" | () |
(())
|
style="text-align:center;" | '''' |
()
|
|
|
|
| fricative consonant>Fricative
|
|
style="text-align:center;" | |
''''
|
style="text-align:center;" | (()) |
style="text-align:center;" | |
''''
|
style="text-align:center;" | '''' |
''''
|
|
style="text-align:center;" | (()) |
style="text-align:center;" | (()) |
| rhotic consonant>Rhotic
|
|
|
|
|
''''
|
|
|
|
()
|
|
| lateral consonant>Lateral
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
()
|
|
|
| approximant consonant>Approximant
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lexical stress
Word
stress was rigorously predictable in classical Latin, either on the
penultimate syllable (second from last) or antepenultimate syllable (third from last), according to the
syllable weight of the penultimate syllable. This is no longer the case in most Romance languages, and stress differences can be enough to distinguish between words. For example, Italian ''Papa'' (Pope) and ''papà'' (daddy), or the Spanish imperfect subjunctive ''cantara'' ([if he] sang) and future ''cantará'' ([he] will sing). However, the main function of Romance stress appears to be a clue for
speech segmentation — namely to help the listener identify the word boundaries in normal speech, where inter-word spaces are usually absent.
The position of the stressed syllable in a word generally varies from word to word in each Romance language. Stress usually remains fixed on its assigned syllable within any language, however, even as the word is inflected. It is usually restricted to one of the last three syllables in the word, although Italian verb forms can violate this, e.g. ''telefonano'' (they telephone). The limit may be exceeded also by verbs with attached clitics, provided the clitics are counted as part of the word; e.g. Spanish ''entregándomelo'' (delivering it to me), Italian ''mettiamocene'' (let's put some of it in there), or Portuguese ''dávamo-vo-lo'' (we were giving it to you).
Stress in the Romance Languages mostly remains on the same syllable as in Latin, but various sound changes have made it no longer so predictable. Still, stress patterns are usually similar across languages, and usually in the penultimate syllable, because in most cases of former antepenultimate stress, the unstressed penultimate syllable was deleted. In its modern form French is the noticeable exception in that stress falls predictably on the last syllable that does not contain a schwa.
It should be observed, however, that the final stress of Modern French is not the result of systematic stress shift, but of the phonological erosion of syllables following the Proto-Romance stressed syllable; thus while e.g. Italian transparently maintains Latin stress on the second syllable of an infinitive such as ''amare'' /aˈmare/, in fact French does, too: ''aimer'' /ɛˈme/, replicating at first Spanish /aˈmar/, but going beyond in losing /r/ as well.
Nominal morphology
Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns can be marked for
gender,
number and
case. Adjectives and pronouns must agree in all features with the noun they are bound to.
Number
The Romance languages inherited from Latin two grammatical numbers, singular and plural; there is no trace of a
dual number.
Gender
Most Romance languages have two
grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. The gender of animate nouns is generally natural (i.e. nouns referring to men are generally masculine, and vice-versa), but for nonanimate nouns it is arbitrary.
Although Latin had a third gender (neuter), there is little trace of this in most languages. The biggest exception is Romanian, where there is a productive class of "neuter" nouns, which include the descendants of many Latin neuter nouns and which behave like masculines in the singular and feminines in the plural, both in the endings used and in the agreement of adjectives and pronouns (e.g. ''un deget'' "one finger" vs. ''două degete'' "two fingers", cf. Latin ''digitum'', pl. ''digita'').
Such nouns arose because of the identity of the Latin neuter singular ''-um'' with the masculine singular, and the identity of the Latin neuter plural ''-a'' with the feminine singular. A similar class exists in Italian, although it is no longer productive (e.g. ''il dito'' "the finger" vs. ''le dita'' "the fingers", ''l'uovo'' "the egg" vs. ''le uova'' "the eggs"). (A few isolated nouns in Latin had different genders in the singular and plural, but this was an unrelated phenomen; this is similarly the case with a few French nouns, such as ''amour'', ''délice'', ''orgue''.)
Case
Latin had an extensive case system, where all nouns were declined in six cases (
nominative,
vocative,
accusative,
dative,
genitive, and
ablative) and two numbers. Adjectives were additionally declined in three genders, leading to potentially 36 (6 * 2 * 3) different endings per adjective. In practice, some category combinations had identical endings to other combinations, but a basic adjective like ''bonus'' "good" still had 14 distinct endings.
| + Spanish pronoun inflections
| Case !! "I" !! "you"(familiar sg.) !! "oneself" !! "he" !! "she" !! "we"
|
| ! Nominative
|
''yo'' |
''tú'' |
— | | ''él'' |
''ella'' |
''nosotros''
|
| Accusative
| ''me'' |
''te'' |
''se'' | | ''lo'' |
''la'' |
''nos''
|
| Dative
| ''me'' |
''te'' |
''se'' | | ''le'' |
''le'' |
''nos''
|
| Genitive
| ''mío'' |
''tuyo'' |
''suyo'' | | ''suyo; de él'' |
''suyo; de ella'' |
''nuestro''
|
| Possessive
| ''mi'' |
''tu'' |
''su'' | | ''su'' |
''su'' |
''nuestro''
|
| Disjunctive
| ''mí'' |
''ti'' |
''sí'' | | ''él'' |
''ella'' |
''nosotros''
|
| With ''con''
| ''conmigo'' |
''contigo'' |
''consigo'' | | ''con él'' |
''con élla'' |
''con nosotros''(archaic ''connosco'')
|
In all Romance languages, this system was drastically reduced. In most modern Romance languages, in fact, case is no longer marked at all on nouns, adjectives and determiners, and most forms are derived from the Latin accusative case. Much like English, however, case has survived somewhat better on pronouns.
Most pronouns have distinct nominative, accusative, genitive and possessive forms (cf. English "I, me, mine, my"). Many also have a separate dative form, a ''disjunctive'' form used after prepositions, and (in some languages) a special form used with the preposition ''con'' "with" (a conservative feature inherited from Latin forms such as ''mēcum'', ''tēcum'', ''nobiscum'').
| + Spanish inflectional classes
| !! "boy" !! "girl" !! "man" !! "woman"
|
| ! Singular
|
chico |
chica |
hombre |
| Plural
| chicos |
chicas |
hombres |
The system of inflectional classes is also drastically reduced. The basic system is most clearly indicated in Spanish, where there are only three classes, corresponding to the first, second and third declensions in Latin: plural in ''-as'' (feminine), plural in ''-os'' (masculine), plural in ''-es'' (either masculine or feminine). The singular endings exactly track the plural, except the singular ''-e'' is dropped after certain consonants.
The same system underlines many other modern Romance languages, such as Portuguese, French and Catalan. In these languages, however, further sound changes have resulted in various irregularities. In Portuguese, for example, loss of /l/ and /n/ between vowels (with nasalization in the latter case) produces various irregular plurals (''nação – nações'' "nation(s)"; ''hotel – hotéis'' "hotel(s)").
In French and Catalan, loss of /o/ and /e/ in most unstressed final syllables has caused the ''-os'' and ''-es'' classes to merge. In French, merger of remaining /e/ with final /a/ into , and its subsequent loss, has completely obscured the original Romance system, and loss of final /s/ has caused most nouns to have identical pronunciation in singular and plural, although they are still marked differently in spelling (e.g. ''femme – femmes'' "woman – women", both pronounced ).
| + Romanian noun inflections
!rowspan=2 | Definiteness ! | rowspan=2|Case !! colspan=2|"boy" !! colspan=2|"girl" |
| ! Singular !! Plural !! Singular !! Plural
|
| Indefinite
|
! NominativeAccusative
|
băiat |
băieți |
fată |
| GenitiveDative
| băiat |
băieți |
fete |
| Vocative
| băiatule, băiete |
băietilor |
fato (fată) |
| rowspan=2 | Definite |
! NominativeAccusative
|
băiatul |
băieții |
fata |
| GenitiveDative
| băiatului |
băieților |
fetei |
Noun inflection has survived in Romanian somewhat better than elsewhere. Determiners are still marked for two cases (nominative/accusative and genitive/dative) in both singular and plural, and feminine singular nouns have separate endings for the two cases. In addition, there is a separate vocative case, and the combination of noun with a following clitic definite article produces a separate set of "definite" inflections for nouns.
The inflectional classes of Latin have also survived more in Romanian than elsewhere, e.g. ''om – oameni'' "man – men" (Latin ''homo'' – ''homines''); ''corp – corpuri'' "body – bodies" (Latin ''corpus'' – ''corpora''). (Many other exceptional forms, however, are due to later sound changes or analogy, e.g. ''casă – case'' "house(s)" vs. ''lună – luni'' "moon(s)"; ''frate – fraţi'' "brother(s)" vs. ''carte – cărţi'' "book(s)" vs. ''vale – văi'' "valley(s)".)
In Italian, the situation is somewhere in between Spanish and Romanian. There are no case endings and relatively few classes, as in Spanish, but noun endings are generally formed with vowels instead of /s/, as in Romanian: ''amico – amici'' "friend(s) (masc.)", ''amica – amiche'' "friend(s) (fem.)"; ''cane – cani'' "dog(s)". The masculine plural ''amici'' is thought to reflect the Latin nominative plural ''-ī'' rather than accusative plural ''-ōs'' (Spanish ''-os''); however, the other plurals are thought to stem from special developments of Latin ''-ās'' and ''-ēs''.
| +Evolution of case in various Romance languages (Latin ''bonus'' "good")
| !! Case !! Latin !! Spanish !! Old French !! Old Sursilvan !! Romanian
|
| Masculine singular
|
! Nominative
|
bonus |
bueno |
rowspan=2buens || | buns |
bun
|
| Vocative
| bone
|
| ! Accusative
|
bonum |
buen |
biVn
|
| Genitive
| bonī
|
| ! Dative
|
bonō
|
| ! Ablative
|
bonō
|
| Masculine plural
|
! Nominative
|
bonī |
buenos |
rowspan=2buen || | biVni |
buni
|
| Vocative
| bonī
|
| ! Accusative
|
bonōs |
buens |
buns
|
| Genitive
| bonōrum
|
| ! Dative
|
bonīs
|
| ! Ablative
|
bonīs
|
| Feminine singular
|
! Nominative
|
bona |
buena |
rowspan=6buene || | buna |
bună
|
| Vocative
| bona
|
| ! Accusative
|
bonam
|
| ! Genitive
|
bonae |
bune
|
| Dative
| bonae
|
| ! Ablative
|
bonā
|
| Feminine plural
|
! Nominative
|
bonae |
buenas |
rowspan=6buenes || | bunas |
bune
|
| ! Vocative
|
bonae
|
| ! Accusative
|
bonās
|
| ! Genitive
|
bonārum
|
| ! Dative
|
bonīs
|
| ! Ablative
|
bonīs
|
A different type of noun inflection survived into the medieval period in a number of western Romance languages (Old French, Old Occitan, and the older forms of a number of Rhaeto-Romance languages). This inflection distinguished nominative from oblique, grouping the accusative case with the oblique, rather than with the nominative as in Romanian.
The oblique case in these languages generally inherits from the Latin accusative; as a result, masculine nouns have distinct endings in the two cases while most feminine nouns don't.
A number of different inflectional classes are still represented at this stage. For example, the difference in the nominative case between masculine ''li voisins'' "the neighbor" and ''li pere'' "the father", and feminine ''la riens'' "the thing" vs. ''la fame'' "the woman", faithfully reflects the corresponding Latin inflectional differences (''vicīnus'' vs. ''pater'', ''fēmina'' vs. ''rēs'').
A number of synchronically quite irregular differences between nominative and oblique reflect direct inheritances of Latin third-declension nouns with two different stems (one for the nominative singular, one for all other forms), most with of which had a stress shift between nominative and the other forms: ''li ber – le baron'' "baron" (''barō'' – ''barōnem''); ''la suer – la seror'' "sister" (''soror'' – ''sorōrem''); ''li prestre – le prevoire'' "priest" (''presbyter'' – ''presbyterem''); ''li sire – le seigneur'' "lord" (''senior'' – ''seniōrem''); ''li enfes – l'enfant'' "child" (''infāns'' – ''infantem'').
A few of these multi-stem nouns derive from Latin forms without stress shift, e.g. ''li om – le ome'' "man" (''homō'' – ''hominem''). All of these multi-stem nouns refer to people; other nouns with stress shift in Latin (e.g. ''amor'' – ''amōrem'' "love") have not survived. Interestingly, some of the same nouns with multiple stems in Old French and/or Old Occitan have come down in Italian in the nominative rather than the accusative (e.g. ''uomo'' "man" < ''homō'', ''moglie'' "wife" < ''mulier''), suggesting that a similar system existed in pre-literary Italian.
The modern situation in Sursilvan (one of the Rhaeto-Romance languages) is unique in that the original nominative/oblique distinction has been reinterpreted as a predicative/attributive distinction:
''il hotel ej vɛɲiws natsionalizaws'' "the hotel has been nationalized"
''il hotel natsionalizaw'' "the nationalized hotel"
Pronouns, determiners
As described above, case marking on pronouns is much more extensive than for nouns.
Determiners (e.g. words such as "a", "the", "this") are also marked for case in Romanian.
Most Romance languages have the following sets of pronouns and determiners:
Personal pronouns, in three persons and two genders.
A reflexive pronoun, used when the object is the same as the subject. This approximately corresponds to English "-self", but separate forms exist only in the third person, with no number marking.
Definite and indefinite articles, and in some languages, a partitive article that expresses the concept of "some".
A two-way or three-way distinction among demonstratives. Many languages have a three-way distinction of distance (near me, near you, near him) not paralleled in current English, but formerly present as "this/that/yon".
Relative pronouns and interrogatives, with the same forms used for both (similar to English "who" and "which").
Various indefinite pronouns and determiners (e.g. Spanish ''algún'' "some", ''alguién'' "someone", ''algo'' "something"; ''ningún'' "no", ''nadie'' "no one"; ''todo'' "every"; ''cada'' "each"; ''mucho'' "much/many/a lot", ''poco'' "few/little"; ''otro'' "other/another"; etc.).
Personal pronouns
Unlike in English, a separate neuter personal pronoun ("it") generally does not exist, but both singular and plural third person distinguish masculine from feminine. Also, as described above, case is marked on pronouns even though it is not usually on nouns, similar to English. As in English, there are forms for
nominative case (
subject pronouns),
oblique case (
object pronouns), and
genitive case (
possessive pronouns); in addition, third-person pronouns distinguish accusative and dative. There is also an additional set of possessive determiners, distinct from the genitive case of the personal pronoun; this corresponds to the English difference between "my, your" and "mine, yours".
Development from Latin
Latin had no third-person personal pronouns, using demonstratives in their place. The Romance languages have innovated a separate set of third-person pronouns by borrowing the demonstrative ''ille'' ("that (over there)"), and creating a separate reinforced demonstrative by attaching a variant of ''ecce'' "behold!" (or "here is ...") to the pronoun. Likewise, Latin had no third-person possessives, filling the gap with the genitive of the demonstrative pronouns.
The Romance languages instead borrow the reflexive possessive, which then serves indifferently as both reflexive and non-reflexive possessive. Note that the reflexive, and hence the third-person possessive, is unmarked for the gender of the person being referred to. Hence, although gendered possessive forms do exist — e.g. Portuguese ''seu'' (masc.) vs. ''sua'' (fem.) — these refer to the gender of the object possessed, not the possessor.
The gender of the possessor needs to be made clear by a collocation such as French ''la voiture à lui/elle'', Portuguese ''o carro dele/dela'', literally "the car of him/her". (In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, these collocations are the usual way of expressing the third-person possessive, since the former possessive ''seu carro'' now has the meaning "your car".)
The same demonstrative ''ille'' was borrowed to create the definite article (see below), which explains the similarity in form between personal pronoun and definite article. When the two are different, it is usually because of differing degrees of phonetic reduction. Generally, the personal pronoun is unreduced (beyond normal sound change), while the article has suffered various amounts of reduction, e.g. Spanish ''ella'' "she" < ''illa'' vs. ''la'' "the (fem.)" < ''-la'' < ''illa''.
Clitic pronouns
Object pronouns in Latin were normal words, but in the Romance languages they have become
clitic forms, which must stand adjacent to a verb and merge phonologically with it. Originally, object pronouns could come either before or after the verb; sound change would often produce different forms in these two cases, with numerous additional complications and contracted forms when multiple clitic pronouns cooccurred.
Catalan still largely maintains this system with a highly complex clitic pronoun system. Most languages, however, have simplified this system by undoing some of the clitic mergers and requiring clitics to stand in a particular position relative to the verb (usually after imperatives, before other finite forms, and either before or after non-finite forms depending on the language).
When a pronoun cannot serve as a clitic, a separate disjunctive form is used. These result from dative object pronouns pronounced with stress (which causes them to develop differently from the equivalent unstressed pronouns), or from subject pronouns.
Most Romance languages are null subject languages. The subject pronouns are used only for emphasis and take the stress, and as a result are not clitics. In French, however (as in some Gallo-Italian languages of northern Italy), verbal agreement marking has degraded to the point that subject pronouns have become mandatory, and have turned into clitics. These forms cannot be stressed, so for emphasis the disjunctive pronouns must be used in combination with the clitic subject forms. The Gallo-Italian languages have actually gone further than this and merged the subject pronouns onto the verb as a new type of verb agreement marking, which must be present even when there is a subject noun phrase. (Some non-standard varieties of French treat disjunctive pronouns as arguments and clitic pronouns as agreement markers.)
Familiar–formal distinction
In medieval times, most Romance languages developed a distinction between familiar and polite second-person pronouns (a so-called ''
T-V distinction''), similar to the former English distinction between familiar "thou" and polite "you". As in English, this generally developed by appropriating the plural second-person pronoun to serve in addition as a polite singular. French is still at this stage, with familiar singular ''tu'' vs. formal or plural ''vous''. In cases like this, the pronoun requires plural agreement in all cases whenever a single morpheme marks both person and number (as in verb agreement endings and object and possessive pronouns), but singular agreement elsewhere where appropriate (e.g. ''vous-même'' "yourself" vs. ''vous-mêmes'' "yourselves").
Many languages, however, innovated further in developing an even more polite pronoun, generally composed of a noun phrase (e.g. Portuguese ''vossa mercê'' "your mercy", progressively reduced to ''vossemecê'', ''vosmecê'' and finally ''você'') and taking third-person singular agreement. A plural equivalent was created at the same time or soon after (Portuguese ''vossas mercês'', reduced to ''vocês''), taking third-person plural agreement. Spanish innovated similarly, with ''usted(es)'' from earlier ''vuestra(s) merced(es)''.
In Portuguese and Spanish (as in other languages with similar forms), the "extra-polite" forms in time came to be the normal polite forms, and the former polite (or plural) second-person ''vos'' knocked down to a familiar form, either becoming a familiar plural (as in European Spanish) or a familiar singular (as in many varieties of Latin American Spanish). In the latter case, it either competes with the original familiar singular ''tu'' (as in Guatemala), displaces it entirely (as in Argentina), or is itself displaced (as in Mexico). In American Spanish, the gap created by the loss of familiar plural ''vos'' was filled by originally polite ''ustedes'', with the result that there is no familiar/polite distinction in the plural, just as in the original ''tu/vos'' system.
A similar path was followed by Italian and Romanian. Romanian uses ''dumneavoastră'' "your lordship", while Italian the former polite phrase ''sua eccellenza'' "your excellency" has simply been supplanted by the corresponding pronoun ''Ella'' or ''Lei'' (literally "she", but capitalized when meaning "you"). As in European Spanish, the original second-person plural ''voi'' serves as familiar plural. (In Italy, during fascist times leading up to World War II, ''voi'' was resurrected as a polite singular, and discarded again afterwards, although it remains in some southern dialects.)
Portuguese innovated again in developing a new extra-polite pronoun ''o senhor'' "the sir", which in turn downgraded ''você''. Hence, modern European Portuguese has a three-way distinction between "familiar" ''tu'', "equalizing" ''você'' and "polite" ''o senhor''. (The original second-person plural ''vós'' was discarded centuries ago in speech, and is used today only in translations of the Bible, where ''tu'' and ''vós'' serve as universal singular and plural pronouns, respectively.)
Brazilian Portuguese, however, has discarded this system entirely, and most dialects simply use ''você'' (and plural ''vocês'') as a general-purpose second person pronoun, combined with ''te'' (from ''tu'') as the clitic object pronoun. The form ''o senhor'' is sometimes used in speech, but only in situations where an English speaker would say "sir" or "ma'am". The result is that second-person verb forms have disappeared entirely, and the whole pronoun system has been radically realigned.
Articles
Latin had no articles as such. The closest definite article was the non-specific demonstrative ''is, ea, id'' meaning approximately "this/that/the". The closest indefinite articles were the indefinite determiners ''aliquī, aliqua, aliquod'' "some (non-specific)" and ''certus'' "a certain".
Romance languages have both indefinite and definite articles, both none of the above words form the basis for either of these. Usually the definite article is derived from the Latin demonstrative ''ille'' ("that"), but some languages (e.g. Sardinian, and some dialects spoken around the Pyrenees) have forms from ''ipse'' (emphatic, as in "I myself"). The indefinite article everywhere derives from the number ''ūnus'' ("one").
Some languages, e.g. French and Italian, have a partitive article that approximately translates as "some". This is used either with mass nouns or with plural nouns — both cases where the indefinite article cannot occur. A partitive article is used (and in French, required) whenever a bare noun refers to specific (but unspecified or unknown) quantity of the noun, but not when a bare noun refers to a class in general. For example, the partitive would be used in both of the following sentences:
:* I want milk.
:* Men arrived today.
But neither of these:
:* Milk is good for you.
:* I hate men.
The sentence "Men arrived today", however, (presumably) means "some specific men arrived today" rather than "men, as a general class, arrived today" (which would mean that there were no men before today). On the other hand, "I hate men" does mean "I hate men, as a general class" rather than "I hate some specific men".
As in many other cases, French has developed the farthest from Latin in its use of articles. In French, nearly all nouns, singular and plural, must be accompanied by an article (either indefinite, definite, or partitive) or demonstrative pronoun. Due to pervasive sound changes, most nouns are pronounced identically in the singular and plural, and there is often heavy homonymy between nouns and identically-pronounced words of other classes.
For example, all of the following are pronounced : ''sain'' "healthy"; ''saint'' "saint, holy"; ''sein'' "breast"; ''ceins'' "(you) put on, gird"; ''ceint'' "(he) puts on, girds"; ''ceint'' "put on, girded"; and the equivalent noun and adjective plural forms ''sains, saints, seins, ceints''. The article helps identify the noun forms ''saint'' or ''sein'', and distinguish singular from plural; likewise, the mandatory subject of verbs helps identify the verb ''ceint''. In more conservative Romance languages, neither articles nor subject pronouns are necessary, since all of the above words are pronounced differently. (In Italian, for example, the equivalents are ''sano, santo, seno, cingi, cinge, cinto, sani, santi, seni, cinti'', where all vowels and consonants are pronounced as written, and ⟨s⟩ and ⟨c⟩ are clearly distinct from each other.)
Latin, at least originally, had a three-way distinction among demonstrative pronouns (''hic'' ''iste'' ''ille'') corresponding to first, second and third persons. Such a distinction is not reflected in modern English, but formerly existed as "this" vs. "that" vs. "yon(der)". In urban Latin of Rome, ''iste'' came to have a specifically derogatory meaning, but this innovation apparently did not reach the provinces and is not reflected in the modern Romance languages. A number of these languages still have such a three-way distinction, although ''hic'' has been lost and the other pronouns have shifted somewhat in meaning. For example, Spanish has ''este'' "this" vs. ''ese'' "that (near you)" vs. ''aquel'' (fem. ''aquella'') "that (over yonder)". The Spanish pronouns derive, respectively, from Latin ''iste'' ''ipse'' ''accu''-''ille'', where ''accu-'' is an emphatic prefix derived from ''eccum'' "behold it!", possibly with influence from ''atque'' "and".
Reinforced demonstratives such as ''accu''-''ille'' became necessary once ''ille'' came to be used as an article as well as a demonstrative. Such forms were often created even when not strictly needed to distinguish otherwise ambiguous forms. Italian, for example, has both ''questo'' "this" (''eccu''-''istum'') and ''quello'' "that" (''eccu''-''illum''), in addition to dialectal ''codesto'' "that (near you)" (''eccu-tē-istum''). French generally prefers forms derived from bare ''ecce'' "behold", as in the pronoun ''ce'' "this one/that one" (earlier ''ço'', from ''ecce''-''hoc'') and the determiner ''ce/cet'' "this/that" (earlier ''cest'', from ''ecce''-''istum'').
Reinforced forms are likewise common in locative adverbs (words such as English ''here'' and ''there''), based on related Latin forms such as ''hic'' "this" vs. ''hīc'' "here", ''hāc'' "this way", and ''ille'' "that" vs. ''illīc'' "there", ''illāc'' "that way". Here again French prefers bare ''ecce'' while Spanish and Italian prefer ''eccum'' (French ''ici'' "here" vs. Spanish ''aquí'', Italian ''qui''). In western languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, doublets and triplets arose such as Portuguese ''aqui, acá, cá'' "(to) here" (''accu''-''hīc'', ''accu''-''hāc'', ''eccu''-''hāc''). From these, a prefix ''a-'' was extracted, from which forms like ''aí'' "there (near you)" (''a-(i)bi'') and ''ali'' "there (over yonder)" (''a-(i)llīc'') were created; compare Catalan neuter pronouns ''açò'' (''acce''-''hoc'') "this", ''això'' (''a-(i)psum''-''hoc'') "that (near you)", ''allò'' (''a-(i)llum''-''hoc'') "that (yonder)".
Subsequent changes often reduced the number of demonstrative distinctions. Standard Italian, for example, has only a two-way distinction "this" vs. "that", as in English, with second-person and third-person demonstratives combined. In Catalan, however, a former three-way distinction ''aquest, aqueix, aquell'' has recently been reduced differently, with first-person and second-person demonstratives combined. Hence ''aquest'' means either "this" or "that (near you)"; on the phone, ''aquest'' is used to refer both to speaker and addressee.
Old French had a similar distinction to Italian (''cist/cest'' vs. ''cil/cel''), both of which could function as either adjectives or pronouns. Modern French, however, has no distinction between "this" and "that": ''ce/cet, cette'' < ''cest, ceste'' is only an adjective, and ''celui, celle'' < ''cel lui, celle'' is only a pronoun, and both forms indifferently mean either "this" or "that". (The distinction between "this" and "that" can be made, if necessary, by adding the suffixes ''-ci'' "here" or ''-là'' "there", e.g. ''cette femme-ci'' "this woman" vs. ''cette femme-là'' "that woman", but this is rarely done except when specifically necessary to distinguish two entities from each other.)
Verbal morphology
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+Origin of Romance tenses
! Latin !! Portuguese !! Spanish !! Catalan !! Occitan !! French !! Rhaeto-Romance !! Italian !! Romanian !! Sardinian
|-
! Present indicative
| colspan="9" | Present indicative
|-
! Present subjunctive
| colspan="9" | Present indicative
|-
! Imperfect indicative
| colspan="9" | Imperfect indicative
|-
! Imperfect subjunctive
| Personal infinitive || — || — || — || — || — || — || — || Imperfect subjunctive /Personal infinitive
|-
! Future indicative
| — || ''eres'' ("you are") || — || — || future of "to be"in
Old French || — || — || — || —
|-
! Perfect indicative
| colspan=2| Preterite || Simple preterite (literary except in
Valencian) || Preterite || Remote past (literary) || — || Remote past || Simple past (literary except in the
Oltenian dialect) || In
Old Sardinian;only traces in modern lang
|-
! Perfect subjunctive
| colspan="9"| —
|-
! Pluperfect indicative
| Literary pluperfect || Imperfect subjunctive (''-ra'' form) || — || Second conditionalin
Old Occitan || Second preterite in very early
Old French(
Sequence of Saint Eulalia) || — || — || — || —
|-
! Pluperfect subjunctive
| colspan="7"|Imperfect subjunctive || Pluperfect indicative || —
|-
! Future perfect
| Future subjunctive(very much alive) || Future subjunctive(moribund) || — || possible traces offuture subjunctivein
Old Occitan || — || — || possible traces offuture subjunctivein
Old Italian || — || —
|-
! New future
| colspan=7| ''infinitive-habeo'' || ''voleo infinitive'' || ''voleo infinitive''
|-
! New conditional
| colspan=5 | ''infinitive-habebam'' || ''infinitive-habuisset'' || ''infinitive-habuit'' || ''habeo infinitive''(split apart from''infinitive-habeo''in 18th-century Romanian) || —
|-
! Preterite vs. present perfect(in speech)
| preterite only(present perfect exists,but has different meaning)
| both
| both (but usually an analytic preterite''vado infinitive'' is used)
| ?
| present perfect only
| present perfect only
| present perfect only
| present perfect only
| present perfect only
|}
Verbs have many conjugations, including in most languages:
A present tense, a preterite, an imperfect, a pluperfect, a future tense and a future perfect in the indicative mood, for statements of fact.
Present and preterite subjunctive tenses, for hypothetical or uncertain conditions. Several languages (for example, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) have also imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives, although it is not unusual to have just one subjunctive equivalent for preterit and imperfect (e.g. no unique subjunctive equivalent in Italian of the so-called ''passato remoto''). Portuguese, and until recently Spanish, also have future and future perfect subjunctives, which have no equivalent in Latin.
An imperative mood, for direct commands.
Three non-finite forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle.
Distinct active and passive voices, as well as an impersonal passive voice.
Note that, although these ''categories'' are largely inherited from Classical Latin, many of the ''forms'' are either newly constructed or inherited from different categories (e.g. the Romance imperfect subjunctive most commonly derives from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive, while the Romance pluperfect subjunctive derives from a new present perfect tense with the auxiliary verb placed in the imperfect subjunctive).
Several tenses and aspects, especially of the indicative mood, have been preserved with little change in most languages, as shown in the following table for the Latin verb ''dīcere'' (to say), and its descendants.
:{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 85%"
|-
! rowspan=2 | !! rowspan=2 | Infinitive !! colspan=3 | Indicative !! Subjunctive !! Imperative
|-
! Present !! Preterite !! Imperfect !! Present !! Present
|-
| align=left | Latin
| dīcere || dīcit || dīxit || dicēbat || dīcat/dīcet || dīc
|-
| align=left | Aragonese
| dicir || diz || dició || deciba/diciba || diga || diz
|-
| align=left | Asturian
| dicir || diz || dixo || dicía || diga ||di
|-
| align=left | Catalan
| dir || diu/dit || digué/va dir/dit || deia || digui/diga || digues
|-
| align=left | Emilian
| dîr || dîs || l'à détt / dgé || dgeva || dégga || dì
|-
| align=left | Franco-Provençal
| dire || di || dè || djéve || dijisse/dzéze || dète
|-
| align=left | French
| dire || dit || dit || disait || dise || dis
|-
| align=left | Galician
| dicir || di || dixo || dicía || diga || di
|-
| align=left | Italian
| dicere/dire || dice || disse || diceva || dica || dì
|-
| align=left | Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino)
| dezir || dize || disho || dezía || diga || dezí
|-
| align=left | Leonese
| dicire || diz || dixu || dicía || diga || di
|-
| align=left | Milanese
| dì || dis || ha dit || diseva || diga || dì
|-
| align=left | Mirandolese
| dir || diś || à dit || dgiva || diga || dì
|-
| align=left | Neapolitan
| dicere || dice || dicette || diceva || diche || dije
|-
| align=left | Occitan
| díser/dire || ditz || diguèt || disiá || diga || diga
|-
| align=left | Picard
| dire || dit || – || disoait || diche || –
|-
| align=left | Piedmontese
| dì || dis || dìsser1, l'ha dit|| disìa || disa || dis
|-
| align=left | Portuguese
| dizer || diz || disse || dizia || diga || diz2
|-
| align=left | Romanian
| a zice, zicere3|| zice || zise || zicea || zică || zi
|-
| align=left | Romansh
| dir || di || ha ditg || discheva4 || dia || di
|-
| align=left | Sardinian
| nàrrere || nàrat || àt naradu || naraìat || nàrat || nàras
|-
| align=left | Sicilian
| dìciri || dici || dissi || dicìa || dica5 || dici
|-
| align=left | Spanish
| decir || dice || dijo || decía || diga || di
|-
| align=left | Venetian
| dir || dise || – || disea || diga || dì/disi
|-
| align=left | Walloon
| dire || dit || a dit || dijheut || dixhe || di
|-
! Basic meaning
| to say || he says || he said || he was saying || he says || say [thou]
|}
:1Until the 18th century.
:2With the disused variant ''dize''.
:3long infinitive
:4In modern times, ''scheva''.
:5Sicilian now uses imperfect subjunctive ''dicissi'' in place of present subjunctive.
The main tense and mood distinctions that were made in classical Latin are generally still present in the modern Romance languages, though many are now expressed through compound rather than simple verbs. The passive voice, which was mostly synthetic in classical Latin, has been completely replaced with compound forms.
Owing to sound changes which made it homophonous with the preterite, the Latin future indicative tense was dropped, and replaced with a periphrasis of the form infinitive + present tense of ''habēre'' (to have). Eventually, this structure was reanalysed as a new future tense.
In a similar process, an entirely new conditional form was created.
While the synthetic passive voice of classical Latin was abandoned in favour of periphrastic constructions, most of the active voice remained in use. However, several tenses have changed meaning, especially subjunctives. For example:
* The Latin pluperfect indicative became a conditional in Sicilian, and an imperfect subjunctive in Spanish.
* The Latin pluperfect subjunctive developed into an imperfect subjunctive in all languages except Romansh, where it became a conditional, and Romanian, where it became a pluperfect indicative.
* The Latin preterite subjunctive, together with the future perfect indicative, became a future subjunctive in Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician.
* The Latin imperfect subjunctive became a personal infinitive in Portuguese and Galician.
Many Romance languages have two verbs "to be". One is derived from Vulgar Latin *''essere'' < Latin ''esse'' "to be" with an admixture of forms derived from ''sedēre'' "to sit", and is used mostly for essential attributes; the other is derived from ''stāre'' "to stand", and mostly used for temporary states. This development is most notable in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. In French, Italian and Romanian, the derivative of ''stāre'' largely preserved an earlier meaning of "to stand/to stay", although in modern Italian, ''stare'' is used in a few constructions where English would use "to be", as in ''sto bene'' "I am well". In Old French, the derivatives of *''essere'' and ''stāre'' were ''estre'' and ''ester'', respectively. In modern French, ''estre'' persists as ''être'' "to be" while ''ester'' has been lost as a separate verb; but the former imperfect of ''ester'' is used as the modern imperfect of ''être'' (e.g. ''il était'' "he was"), replacing the irregular forms derived from Latin (e.g. ''ere(t), iere(t)'' < ''erat''). In Italian, the two verbs share the same past participle, ''stato''. ''sedēre'' persists most notably in the future of *''essere'' (e.g. Spanish/Portuguese/French/etc. ''ser-'', Italian ''sar-''), although in Old French the future a direct derivation from Latin, e.g. ''(i)ert'' "he will be" < ''erit''. See Romance copula, for further information.
For a more detailed illustration of how the verbs have changed with respect to classical Latin, see
Romance verbs.
During the Renaissance, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and a few other Romance languages developed a progressive aspect which did not exist in Latin. In French, progressive constructions remain very limited, the imperfect generally being preferred, as in Latin.
Many Romance languages now have a verbal construction analogous to the present perfect of English. In some, it has taken the place of the old preterite (at least in the vernacular); in others, the two coexist with somewhat different meanings (cf. English ''I did'' vs. ''I have done''). A few examples:
* preterite only: Galician, Asturian, Sicilian, Leonese, Portuguese, some dialects of Spanish;
* preterite and present perfect: Catalan, Occitan, standard Spanish;
* present perfect predominant, preterite now literary: French, Romanian, several dialects of Italian and Spanish.
* present perfect only: Romansh
Note that in Catalan, the synthetic preterite is predominantly a literary tense, except in Valencian; but an analytic preterite (formed using an auxiliary ''vadō'', which in other languages signals the future) persists in speech, with the same meaning. In Portuguese, a morphological present perfect does exist but has a different meaning (closer to "I have been doing"), and is rare in practice.
The following are common features of the Romance languages (inherited from Vulgar Latin) that are different from Classical Latin:
Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify.
The normal clause structure is SVO, rather than SOV, and is much less flexible than in Latin.
Many Latin constructions involving nominalized verbal forms (e.g. the use of accusative plus infinitive in indirect discourse and the use of the ablative absolute) were dropped in favor of constructions with subordinate clause. Exceptions can be found in Italian, for example, Latin ''tempore permittente'' > Italian ''tempo permettendo''; L. ''hoc facto'' > I. ''ciò fatto''.
Lexicon
;Borrowing
Vulgar Latin borrowed many words, often from
Germanic languages, that replaced words from Classical Latin during the
Migration Period, including some basic vocabulary. Notable examples are *''blancus'' (white), which replaced Classical Latin ''albus'' in most major languages; *''guerra'' (war), which replaced ''bellum''; and the words for the
cardinal directions, where
cognates of English "north", "south", "east" and "west" replaced the Classical Latin words ''borealis'' (or ''septentrionalis''), ''australis'' (or ''meridionalis''), ''orientalis'', and ''occidentalis''. (See
History of French – The Franks.) Some
Celtic words were incorporated into the basic vocabulary, partly for words with no Latin equivalent (''camisia'' "shirt", ''carrus'' "cart", ''cerevisia'' "beer"), but in some cases replacing Latin vocabulary (''cambiāre'' "to change", replacing ''mūtāre'' except in Portuguese; *''pettia'' "piece", largely displacing ''pars'' (later resurrected) and eliminating ''frustum''). Many Greek words also entered the lexicon. e.g. ''spatha'' "sword" (replacing ''gladium'', cf. French ''épée'', Spanish ''espada'', Italian ''spada''); ''cara'' "face" (partly replacing ''faciēs''); ''colpe'' "blow" (replacing ''ictus'', cf. Spanish ''golpe'', French ''coup''); ''cata'' "each" (replacing ''quisque''); common suffixes *''-ijāre/-izāre'' (French ''-iser'', Spanish ''-ear/-izar'', Italian ''-eggiare/-izzare'', etc.), ''-ista''.
;Lexical replacement
Many basic nouns and verbs, especially those that were short and/or had irregular morphology, were replaced by longer derived forms with regular morphology. Nouns, and sometimes adjectives, were often replaced by diminutives: e.g. ''auris'' "ear" > ''auricula'' (orig. "little ear") > ''oricla'' (French ''oreille'', Spanish ''oreja'', etc.); ''avis'' "bird" > ''avicellus'' (orig. "little bird"; French ''oiseau''); ''vetus'' "old" > ''vetulus'' > ''veclus'' (French ''vieil'', Spanish ''viejo'', etc.). Sometimes augmentative constructions were used instead: ''piscis'' "fish" > *''piscione'' (orig. "big fish") > French ''poisson''. Verbs were often replaced by frequentative constructions: ''canere'' "to sing" > ''cantāre''; ''iacere'' "to throw" > ''iactāre'' > *''iectāre'' (French ''jeter'', Spanish ''echar'', Italian ''gettare'', etc.); ''iuvāre'' > ''adiūtāre'' (French ''aider'', Spanish ''ayudar'', Italian ''aiutare'' etc.); ''vēnārī'' "hunt" > replaced by *''captiāre'' "to hunt", frequentative of ''capere'' "to seize" (French ''chasser'', Spanish ''cazar'', Italian ''cacciare'', etc.).
Many Classical Latin words came to be associated with "high culture" and were replaced by originally "low" terms: ''equus'' "horse" > ''caballus'' (orig. "nag"); ''domus'' "house" > ''casa'' (orig. "hut"); ''ignis'' "fire" > ''focus'' (orig. "hearth"); ''strāta'' "street" > ''rūga'' (orig. "furrow") or ''callis'' (orig. "footpath") (but ''strāta'' remains in Italian). In some cases, terms from common occupations became generalized: ''invenīre'' "to find" > Ibero-Romance ''(f)afflāre'' (orig. "to sniff out", in hunting); ''advenīre'' "to arrive" > Ibero-Romance ''plicāre'' (orig. "to fold (sails)"), elsewhere ''arripāre'' (orig. "to get to the river bank"). The same thing sometimes happened to religious terms, due to the pervasive influence of Christianity: ''loquī'' "to speak" > ''parabolāre'' (orig. "to tell parables") or ''fabulārī'' (orig. "to tell stories"), based on Jesus' way of speaking in parables.
Many Latin combining prefixes were incorporated in the lexicon as new roots and verb stems, e.g. Italian ''estrarre'' (to extract) from Latin ''ex-'' (out of) and ''trahere'' (to drag).
A number of common Latin words that have disappeared in many or most Romance languages have survived either in the periphery or in remote corners (especially Sardinia). For example, Latin ''caseum'' "cheese" survives in the eastern and western edges (Portuguese ''queijo'', Spanish ''queso'', Romanian ''caş''), but in the central areas has been replaced by ''formāticum'', originally "formed (cheese)" (French ''fromage'', Italian ''formaggio''); similarly ''(com)edere'' "to eat (up)", which survives as Spanish/Portuguese ''comer'' but elsewhere is replaced by ''mandūcāre'', originally "to chew" (French ''manger'', Italian ''mangiare'', Romanian ''mânca''). In some cases, one language happens to preserve a word displaced elsewhere, e.g. Italian ''ogni'' "every" < ''omnem'', displaced elsewhere by ''tōtum'', originally "whole". Sardinian in particular preserves many words entirely lost elsewhere, e.g. ''emmo'' "yes" < ''immo'' "rather/yes/no", ''mannu'' "big" < ''magnum'', ''narare'' "to say" < ''narrāre'' "to tell", and ''domo'' "house" < ablative]''domō'' "at home". Sardinian even preserves some words that were already archaic in Classical Latin, e.g. ''akina'' "grape" < ''acinam'', ''peθa'' "meat" < *''pettiam''.
;Latinisms
During medieval times, large numbers of words were borrowed directly from Classical Latin (so-called latinisms), either in their original form (''learned words'') or in something approximating their original form (''semi-learned words''). These introduced many doublets, e.g. Latin ''fragilis'' > French ''fragile'' "fragile" (learned) and ''frêle'' "frail" (popular); Latin ''fabrica'' "craft, manufacture" > French ''fabrique'' "factory" (learned) and ''forge'' "forge" (popular), Spanish ''fábrica'' "factory" (learned) and ''fragua'' "forge" (popular); Latin ''lēgālis'' "legal" > French ''légal'' "legal" (learned) and ''loyal'' "loyal" (popular), Spanish ''legal'' "legal" (learned) and ''leal'' "loyal" (popular); ''advōcātus'' "advocate" > French ''avocat'' "lawyer" (learned) and ''avoué'' "attorney, solicitor" (popular); Latin ''polīre'' "to polish" > Portuguese ''polir'' "to polish" (learned) and ''puir'' "to wear thin" (popular). Sometimes triplets can be produced: Latin ''articulus'' "joint" > Portuguese ''artículo'' "(anatomical) articulation" (learned), ''artigo'' "article" (semi-learned), ''artelho'' "ankle" (popular; obsolete or dialectal). In many cases, the learned word simply displaced the original popular word, e.g. Spanish ''crudo'' "crude" (Old Spanish ''cruo''); French ''légume'' "vegetable" (Old French ''leüm''); Portuguese ''flor'' "flower" (Old Portuguese ''chor''). The learned word always looks more like the original than the popular word does, since regular sound change has been bypassed; likewise, it usually has a meaning closer to the original.
Borrowing from Classical Latin has produced a large number of suffix doublets. Examples from Spanish (learned form first): ''-ción'' vs. ''-zon''; ''-cia'' vs. ''-za''; ''-ificar'' vs. ''-iguar''; ''-izar'' vs. ''-ear''; ''-mento'' vs. ''-miento''; ''-tud'' (< nominative ''-tūdō'') vs. ''-dumbre'' (< accusative ''-tūdine''); ''-ículo'' vs. ''-ejo''; etc. Similar examples can be found in all the other Romance languages.
This borrowing also introduced large numbers of classical prefixes in their original form (''dis-'', ''ex-'', ''post-'') and reinforced many others (''re-'', popular Spanish/Portuguese ''des-'' < ''dis-'', popular French ''dé-'' < ''dis-'', popular Italian ''s-'' < ''ex-''). Many Greek prefixes and suffixes (hellenisms) also found their way into the lexicon: ''tele-'', ''poli-/poly-'', ''meta-'', ''pseudo-'', ''-scope/scopo'', ''-logie/logia/logía'', etc.
Sound changes
Consonants
Significant
sound changes affected the consonants of the Romance languages.
Apocope
There was a tendency to eliminate final consonants in Vulgar Latin, either by dropping them (
apocope) or adding a vowel after them (
epenthesis).
Many final consonants were rare, occurring only in certain prepositions (e.g. ''ad'' "towards", ''apud'' "at, near (a person)"), conjunctions (''sed'' "but"), demonstratives (e.g. ''illud'' "that (over there)", ''hoc'' "this"), and nominative singular noun forms, especially of neuter nouns (e.g. ''lac'' "milk", ''mel'' "honey", ''cor'' "heart"). Many of these prepositions and conjunctions were replaced by others, while the nouns were regularized into forms that avoided the final consonants (e.g. *''lacte'', *''mele'', *''core'').
Final ''-m'' was dropped in Vulgar Latin. Even in Classical Latin, final ''-am'', ''-um'' (accusative endings) was often elided in poetic meter, suggesting the ''m'' was weakly pronounced, probably marking the nasalisation of the vowel before it. This nasal vowel lost its nasalization in the Romance languages except in monosyllables, where it became /n/ (cf. Spanish ''quien'' < ''quem'', French ''rien'' < ''rem'').
As a result, only the following final consonants occurred in Vulgar Latin:
Final ''-t'' in third-person singular verb forms, and ''-nt'' (often reduced to ''-n'') in third-person plural verb forms.
Final ''-s'' in a large number of morphological endings (verb endings ''-ās/-ēs/-īs/-is'', ''-mus'', ''-tis''; nominative singular ''-us/-is''; plural ''-ās/-ōs/-ēs'') and certain other words (''trēs'' "three", ''crās'' "tomorrow", etc.).
Final ''-n'' in some monosyllables (from earlier ''-m''), and where ''-nt'' reduced to ''-n''.
Final ''-r'', ''-d'' in some prepositions (e.g. ''ad'', ''per''), which were proclitic forms that attached phonologically to the following word.
Very occasionally, final ''-c'', e.g. Occitan ''oc'' "yes" < ''hoc'' (possibly protected by a final epenthetic vowel at one point).
Final ''-t'' was eventually dropped in many languages, although this often occurred several centuries after the Vulgar Latin period. For example, the reflex of ''-t'' was dropped in Old French and Old Spanish only around AD 1100. In Old French, this occurred only when a vowel still preceded the consonant. Hence ''venit'' "he comes" > Old French ''vient'', and the /t/ was never dropped. (It survives to this day in liaison forms, e.g. ''vient-il?'' "is he coming?" .)
In Italo-Romance and Eastern Romance, eventually ''all'' final consonants were either dropped or protected by an epenthetic vowel, except in clitic forms (e.g. prepositions ''con'', ''per''). Modern Italian still has almost no consonant-final words, although Romanian has regained them through later loss of final /u/. For example, ''amās'' "you love" > ''ame'' > ''ami''; ''amant'' "they love" > *''aman'' > ''amano''. On the evidence of "sloppily-written" Langobardic documents, however, the loss of final /s/ did not occur till the 7th or 8th century AD, after the Vulgar Latin period, and the presence of many former final consonants is betrayed by the syntactic gemination (''raddoppiamento sintattico'') that they trigger. It is also thought that /s/ became /j/ rather than simply disappearing: ''nōs'' > ''noi'' "we", ''s(ed)ēs'' > ''sei'' "you are", ''crās'' > ''crai'' "tomorrow" (southern Italian). In unstressed syllables, the resulting diphthongs were simplified: ''amīcās'' > /aˈmikai/ > ''amiche'' /aˈmike/ "(female) friends", where nominative ''amīcae'' should produce ''**amice'' rather than ''amiche'' (masculine ''amīcī'' > ''amici'' not ''**amichi'').
Central Western Romance languages eventually regained a large number of final consonants through the general loss of final /e/ and /o/, e.g. Catalan ''llet'' "milk" < ''lactem'', ''foc'' "fire" < ''focum'', ''peix'' "fish" < ''piscem''. In French, most of these secondary final consonants were lost, but tertiary final consonants later arose through the loss of /ə/ < ''-a''. Hence masculine ''frigidum'' "cold" > Old French /froit/ > ''froid'' , feminine ''frigidam'' > Old French /froidə/ > ''froide'' .
Palatalization
Palatalization was one of the most important processes affecting consonants in Vulgar Latin. This eventually resulted in a whole series of "" and/or consonants in most Romance languages, e.g. Italian .
The following historical stages occurred:
| Stage !! Environment !! Consonants affected !! Result !! Languages affected
|
| 1 |
rowspan=2 |
/t/, /d/ | | /tsʲ/, /jj~dzʲ~ddʒʲ/ |
all
|
| 2 |
all remaining, except labial consonants | | /ttʃʲ~ttsʲ/ < ''-ky-'', /jj~ddʒʲ/ < ''-gy-'', /ɲɲ/, /ʎʎ/, /Cʲ/ |
Sardinian language>Sardinian
|
| 3 |
before /i/ | | /k/, /g/ |
/tʃʲ~tsʲ/, /j~dʒʲ/ |
all except Sardinian
|
| 4 |
|
| 5 |
before /a/ | | /tɕ~tʃʲ/, /dʑ~dʒʲ/ |
north-central Gallo-Romance (e.g.
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">French language |
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 Eastern Romance) with /tʃ/ resulting. It is often suggested that /tʃ/ was the original result in all languages, with /tʃ/ > /ts/ a later innovation in the Western Romance languages. Evidence of this is the fact that Italian has both /ttʃ/ and /tts/ as outcomes of palatalization in different environments, while Western Romance has only /(t)ts/. Even more suggestive is the fact that Mozarabic, in southern Spain, had /tʃ/ as the outcome despite being in the "Western Romance" area and geographically disconnected from the remaining /tʃ/ areas; this suggests that Mozarabic was an outlying "relic" area where the change /tʃ/ > /ts/ failed to reach. (Northern French dialects, such as [[Norman language">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 with an initial , became Italian ''cielo'' , Romanian ''cer'' , Spanish ''cielo'' /, French ''ciel'' , Catalan ''cel'' , and Portuguese ''céu'' .
The outcome of palatalized /d/ and /g/ is less clear:
Original /j/ has the same outcome as palatalized /g/ everywhere.
Romanian fairly consistently has /z/ < /dz/ from palatalized /d/, but /dʒ/ from palatalized /g/.
Italian inconsistently has from palatalized /d/, and from palatalized /g/.
Most other languages have the same results for palatalized /d/ and /g/: consistent initially, but either /j/ or medially (depending on language and exact context). But
Spanish has /j/ initially except before /o/, /u/; nearby
Gascon is similar.
This suggests that palatalized /d/ > /dʲ/ > either /j/ or /dz/ depending on location, while palatalized /g/ > /j/; after this, /j/ > /(d)dʒ/ in most areas, but Spanish and Gascon (originating from isolated districts behind the western Pyrenees) were relic areas unaffected by this change.
In French, the outcomes of /k/ palatalized by /e,i,j/ and by /a/ were different: ''centum'' "hundred" > ''cent'' but ''cantum'' "song" > ''chant'' .
The original outcomes of palatalization must have continued to be phonetically palatalized even after they had developed into //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'' > > > > early Old French ''maisnieḍe'' "household". Similarly, ''mediētātem'' > > > > early Old French ''meitieḍ'' > modern French ''moitié'' "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 AD?), well after the fragmentation of the Romance languages.
The effect of palatalization is indicated in the writing systems of almost all Romance languages, where the letters ⟨c g⟩ have the "hard" pronunciation in most situations, but a "soft" pronunciation (e.g. French/Portuguese , Italian/Romanian ) before ⟨e i y⟩. (Because Middle English was originally written by scribes speaking Norman French, the English spelling system has the same peculiarity.) This has the effect of keeping the modern spelling similar to the original Latin spelling, but complicates the relationship between sound and letter. In particular, the hard sounds must be written differently before ⟨e i y⟩ (e.g. Italian ⟨ch gh⟩, Portuguese ⟨qu gu⟩), and likewise for the soft sounds when not before these letters (e.g. Italian ⟨ci gi⟩, Portuguese ⟨ç j⟩). Furthermore, in Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese, the use of ⟨u⟩ to signal the hard pronunciation before ⟨e i y⟩ means that a different spelling is also needed to signal the sounds before these letters (Spanish ⟨cu gü⟩, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese ⟨qü gü⟩). This produces a number of orthographic alternations in verbs whose pronunciation is entirely regular. The following are examples of corresponding first-person plural indicative and subjunctive in a number of regular Portuguese verbs: ''marcamos marquemos'' "we mark"; ''caçamos cacemos'' "we hunt"; ''chegamos cheguemos'' "we arrive"; ''averiguamos averigüemos'' "we verify"; ''adequamos adeqüemos'' "we adapt"; ''oferecemos ofereçamos'' "we offer"; ''dirigimos dirijamos'' "we drive" ''erguemos ergamos'' "we raise"; ''delinquimos delincamos'' "we commit a crime".
Lenition
Stop consonants shifted by
lenition in Vulgar Latin.
The voiced labial consonants and (represented by ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩, respectively) both developed a fricative 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 ; but in others (Spanish, Galician, some Catalan and Occitan dialects, etc.) reflexes of and 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, nor apparently at all in Romanian. The dividing line between the two sets of dialects is called the La Spezia-Rimini line and is one of the most important isoglosses of the Romance dialects. The changes (instances of diachronic lenition) are as follows:
Single voiceless plosives became voiced: ''-p-, -t-, -c-'' → ''-b-, -d-, -g-''. Subsequently, in some languages they were further weakened, either becoming fricatives or approximants, (as in Spanish) or disappearing entirely (as and , but not , in French). The following example shows progressive weakening of original /t/: e.g. ''vītam'' > Italian ''vita'' , Portuguese ''vida'' (European Portuguese ), Spanish ''vida'' , French ''vie'' .
The voiced plosives and tended to disappear.
The plain sibilant ''-s-'' was also voiced to between vowels, although in many languages its spelling has not changed. (In Spanish, intervocalic was later devoiced back to .)
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.
The double sibilant ''-ss-'' also became phonetically single , although in many languages its spelling has not changed.
Consonant length is no longer phonemically distinctive in most Romance languages. However some languages of Italy (Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, and numerous other varieties of central and southern Italy) do have long consonants like , , /ll/, /mm/, /nn/, /ss/, and to a lesser extent /rr/, etc., where the doubling indicates a short hold before the consonant is released, in many cases with distinctive lexical value: e.g. ''note'' (notes) vs. ''notte'' (night), ''cade'' (s/he, it falls) vs. ''cadde'' (s/he, it fell). They may even occur at the beginning of words in Romanesco, Neapolitan and Sicilian, and are occasionally indicated in writing, e.g. Sicilian ''cchiù'' (more), and ''ccà'' (here). In general, the consonants , , and are long at the start of a word, while the archiphoneme is realised as a trill in the same position.
A few languages have regained secondary geminate consonants. The double consonants of Piedmontese exist only after stressed , 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 written ''ŀl'' (Catalan) or ''ll'' (Occitan), but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech in both languages.
Prosthesis
In
Western Romance, an
epenthetic or
prosthetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with and another consonant: ''spatha'' "sword" > Spanish/Portuguese ''espada'', Catalan ''espasa'', Old French ''espeḍe'' > modern ''épée''. In Italian, syllabification rules were preserved instead by vowel-final articles, thus feminine ''spada'' as ''la spada'', but instead of rendering the masculine ''*il spaghetto'', ''lo spaghetto'' came to be the norm. Though receding at present, Italian once had an epenthetic if a consonant preceded such clusters, so that 'in Switzerland' was ''in'' ''Svizzera''. Some speakers still use the prosthetic , and it is fossilized in a few set phrases as ''per iscritto'' 'in writing'.
Stressed vowels
Loss of vowel length, reorientation
| Evolution of the stressed vowels in early Romance
|
| Classical
|
Proto-Romance
| WesternRomance
|
! BalkanRomance !! Sardinian !! Sicilian
|
| !Acad.1
|
!Roman
|
!colspan=2 |
!Acad.1
|
!width="60"IPA !! colspan="3"|IPA |
| ! ''ī''
|
long ''i'' |
|
rowspan=2 || | i |
|
|
|
| ''ȳ''
| long ''y'' |
|
| ''i (ĭ)''
| short ''i'' |
|
rowspan=2 || | ẹ |
|
| ''y (y̆)''
| short ''y'' |
|
| ''ē''
| long ''e'' |
|
rowspan=2| | |
| ''œ''
| ''oe'' |
>
|
| ''e (ĕ)''
| short ''e'' |
|
rowspan=2 || | ę |
|
|
| ''æ''
| ''ae'' |
>
|
| ''ā''
| long ''a'' |
|
rowspan=2 || | a |
|
| ''a (ă)''
| short ''a'' |
|
| ''o (ŏ)''
| short ''o'' |
|
| | ǫ |
|
|
|
| ''ō''
| long ''o'' |
|
rowspan=2 || | ọ |
|
|
| ''au''''(a few words)''
| ''au'' |
>
|
| ''u (ŭ)''
| short ''u'' |
|
> |
| ''ū''
| long ''u'' |
|
| | u |
|
| ''au''''(most words)''
| ''au'' |
|
au > |
|
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 in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced 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 while ''ĕ'' was pronounced open-mid , and ''ī'' was pronounced close while ''ĭ'' was pronounced near-close .
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'' "he falls" vs. ''cadde'' "he fell".
The Proto-Romance loss of phonemic length originally produced a system with nine different quality distinctions in monophthongs, where only original 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. > , > : This produced a simple five-vowel system .
In most areas, however (technically, the Italo-Western languages), the near-close vowels lowered and merged into the high-mid vowels . 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 , still maintained in conservative languages such as Italian and Portuguese, and lightly transformed in Spanish (where ).
In the Eastern Romance languages (particularly, Romanian), the front vowels evolved as in the majority of languages, but the back vowels evolved as in Sardinian. This produced an unbalanced six-vowel system: . In modern Romanian, this system has been significantly transformed, with and with new vowels evolving, leading to a balanced seven-vowel system with central as well as front and back vowels: .
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. .
The Proto-Romance allophonic vowel-length system was rephonemicized in the Gallo-Romance languages as a result of the loss of many final vowels. Some northern Italian languages (e.g. Friulan) still maintain this secondary phonemic length, but most languages dropped it by either diphthongizing or shortening the new long vowels.
French phonemicized a third vowel system around AD 1300 as a result of the sound change /VsC/ > /VhC/ > (where ''V'' is any vowel and ''C'' any consonant). This vowel length was eventually lost by around AD 1700, but the former long vowels are still marked with a circumflex. A fourth vowel length system, still non-phonemic, has now arisen: All nasal vowels as well as the oral vowels (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 . This system in turn has been phonemicized in some non-standard dialects (e.g. Haitian Creole), as a result of the loss of final .
Latin diphthongs
The Latin diphthongs ''ae'' and ''oe'', pronounced and in earlier Latin, were early on monophthongized.
''ae'' became by the 1st century AD at the latest. Although this sound was still distinct from all existing vowels, the neutralization of Latin vowel length eventually caused its merger with < short ''e'': e.g. ''caelum'' "sky" > French ''ciel'', Spanish/Italian ''cielo'', Portuguese ''céu'' , with the same vowel as in ''mele'' "honey" > French/Spanish ''miel'', Italian ''miele'', Portuguese ''mel'' . A few words show an early merger of ''ae'' with , as in ''praeda'' > Gallo-Romance > French ''proie'' "prey" (vs. the expected form ''*priée'').
''oe'' generally merged with : ''poenam'' "pain" > Italo-Romance > Spanish/Italian ''pena'', French ''peine''. 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'').
''au'' merged with ''ō'' in the popular speech of Rome already by the 1st century BC. 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 , but this post-dates diphthongization and the French-specific palatalization > (hence ''causa'' > ''chose''). Spanish has /o/, but Portuguese spelling maintains ⟨ou⟩, only recently developed to (and still /ou/ in some dialects). Occitan, Romanian, southern Italian dialects, and many other minority Romance languages still have /au/. A few common words, however, show an early merger with ''ō'', evidently reflecting a generalization of the popular Roman pronunciation: e.g. French ''queue'', Italian ''coda'' , Occitan ''coa'', Romanian ''coadă'' (all meaning "tail") must all derive from ''cōda'' rather than Classical ''cauda''. Similarly, Portuguese ''orelha'', Romanian ''ureche'' (both "ear") must derive from ''oricla'' rather than Classical ''auris'', and the form ''oricla'' is in fact reflected in the Appendix Probi (but Occitan ''aurelha'' reflects ''auricla'', possibly influenced by a reflex of ''auris'').
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.
| +Raising-type metaphony in Servigliano, in the Marches of Italy
| Unaffected !! Mutated
|
| "I put" |
"you put"
|
| "this (neut.)" |
"this (masc.)"
|
| "modest (fem.)" |
"modest (masc.)"
|
| "I preach" |
"you preach"
|
| "flower" |
"flowers"
|
| "wife" |
"husband"
|
| "he dies" |
"you die"
|
| "depressed (fem.)" |
"depressed (fem.)"
|
| +Diphthongization-type metaphony in Calvallo, in the Basilicata region of southern Italy
| Unaffected !! Mutated
|
| "foot" |
"feet"
|
| "light (fem.)" |
"light (masc.)"
|
| "I think" |
"you think"
|
| "month" |
"months"
|
| "he puts" |
"you put"
|
| "woods" |
"woods (pl.)"
|
| "big (fem.)" |
"big (masc.)"
|
| "I move" |
"you move"
|
| "coal" |
"coals"
|
| "alone (fem.)" |
"alone (masc.)"
|
| "he runs" |
"you run"
|
Metaphony in the southern Italian languages (those to the south of Tuscany) is triggered by final /i/ and /u/. High-mid vowels /e o/ are raised to /i u/, and low-mid vowels are either raised to or diphthongized to . Metaphony is not triggered by final /o/. The main occurrences of final /i/ are as follows:
The plural of nouns in ''-o'' (< nominative plural ''-ī'').
The plural of nouns in ''-e'' (either a regular development of third-declension plural ''-ēs'', or from analogical plural ''-ī'').
The second-person singular present tense (a regular development of ''-ēs'' in verbs in ''-ere, -ēre, -īre'', and analogical in verbs in ''-āre''; in Old Italian, the regular ending ''-e'' is still found in ''-are'' verbs).
The first-person singular past indicative (< ''-ī'').
The main occurrences of final /o/ are as follows:
The first-person singular present indicative (< ''-ō'').
Masculine "mass" nouns, and "neuter" (mass-noun) demonstratives (disputed origin).
The main occurrence of final /u/ is in masculine "count" nouns (< ''-um'').
Metaphony in the northern Italian languages (those to the north of Tuscany) is triggered only by final /i/. In these languages, as in Tuscan, final /u/ was lowered to /o/; this evidently happened prior to the action of metaphony. In these languages, metaphony also tends to apply to final /a/, raising it to or /e/.
In most Italian languages, most final vowels have become obscured (in the south) or lost (in the north), and the effects of metaphony are often the only markers of masculine vs. feminine and singular vs. plural.
In some of the Astur-Leonese dialects, in northern Spain, the same distinction between final /o/ and /u/ exists (right down to the distinction between mass and count nouns), along with a very similar sort of metaphony triggered by final /u/. In these dialects, nouns with final /u/ have a plural in /os/ (< ''-ōs'').
Sardinian likewise has a distinction between final /o/ and /u/ (again with plural /os/), along with metaphony. In the conservative Logudorese and Nuorese dialects, the result of metaphony is a non-phonemic alternation between (when final /i/ or /u/ occurs) and (with other final vowels). In Campidanese, final /e o/ have been raised to /i u/, with the result that the metaphonic alternations have been phonemicized.
Raising of to by a following final /u/ occurs sporadically in Portuguese. Example: ''porcum, porcōs'' "pig, pigs" > PIR > Portuguese ''porco'' vs. ''porcos'' ; ''novum, novōs, novam, novās'' "new (masc., masc. pl., fem., fem. pl.)" > PIR > Portuguese ''novo'' vs. ''novos, nova, novas'' . In this case, Old Portuguese apparently had /u/ in the singular vs. /os/ in the plural, despite the spelling ⟨-o -os⟩; a later development has raised plural /os/ to /us/. Unlike elsewhere, this development is only sporadic and only affects , not . Furthermore, the mass/count distinction is expressed very differently: Only a few "mass neuter" demonstratives exist, and they have a ''higher'' rather than lower vowel (''tudo'' "everything" vs. ''todo'' "all (masc.)", ''isto'' "this (neut.)" vs. ''este'' "this (masc.)"). In addition, the original pattern has been extended to some nouns originally in /o/, e.g. ''todo'' /o/ "all" vs. plural ''todos'' < ''tōtum, tōtōs''.
In all of the Western Romance languages, metaphony was triggered by a final /i/ (especially of the first-person singular of the preterite), raising mid-high stressed vowels to high vowels. (This does not normally occur in the nominative plural noun forms in Old French and Old Occitan that have a reflex of nominative plural /i/, suggesting that these developments were removed early by analogy.) Examples:
''vīgintī'' > *''vigintī'' > PIR > Italian ''venti''; but > pre-PWR > PWR > Old Spanish ''veínte'' (> modern ''veinte'' ), Old Portuguese ''veínte'' (> ''viínte'' > modern ''vinte''), Old French ''vint'' (> modern ''vingt'' ).
''fēcī, fēcit'' > Italian ''feci, fece''; but > pre-PWR > > PWR > Old Spanish ''fize, fezo'' (modern ''hice, hizo''), Portuguese ''fiz, fez'', Old French ''fis, fist'' (< ''*fis, feist'').
Romanian shows metaphony of the opposite sort, where final /a/ (and also /e/, especially in the case of /o/) caused a diphthongization /e/ > /ea/, /je/ > /ja/, /o/ > /oa/: ''cēram'' "wax" > ''ceară''; ''equam'' "mare" > > > ''iapă''; ''flōrem'' "flower" > ''floare''; ''nostrum, nostrī, nostram, nostrās'' "our (masc. sg., masc. pl., fem. sg., fem. pl.)" > > ''nostru, noştri, noastră, noastre''.
Diphthongization
A number of languages
diphthongized some of the free vowels, especially the low-mid vowels :
Spanish consistently diphthongized all low-mid vowels except for before certain palatal consonants (which raised the vowels to high-mid before diphthongization took place).
Romanian similarly diphthongized to (the corresponding vowel did not develop from Proto-Romance).
Italian diphthongized and in open syllables (in the situations where vowels were lengthened in Proto-Romance).
French similarly diphthongized in open syllables (when lengthened), along with : > > OF > modern .
French also diphthongized before palatalized consonants, especially /j/. Further development was as follows: ; > /uoj/ > early OF /uj/ > modern /ɥi/.
Catalan dipthongized before /j/ from palatalized consonants, just like French, with similar results: , .
These diphthongizations had the effect of reducing or eliminating the distinctions between low-mid and high-mid vowels in many languages. In Spanish and Romanian, all low-mid vowels were diphthongized, and the distinction disappeared entirely. Portuguese is the most conservative in this respect, keeping the seven-vowel system more or less unchanged (but with changes in particular circumstances, e.g. due to metaphony, as described above). Other than before palatalized consonants, Catalan keeps intact, but split in a complex fashion into and then coalesced again in the standard dialect (Eastern Catalan) in such a way that most original have reversed their quality to become .
In French and Italian, the distinction between low-mid and high-mid vowels occurred only in closed syllables. Standard Italian more or less maintains this. In French, /e/ and merged by the 12th century or so, and the distinction between and was eliminated without merging by the sound changes , . Generally this led to a situation where both and occur allophonically, with the high-mid vowels in open syllables and the low-mid vowels in closed syllables. This is still the situation in modern Spanish, for example. In French, however, both and were partly rephonemicized: Both and occur in open syllables as a result of , and both and occur in closed syllables as a result of .
French also had numerous falling diphthongs from a /j/ spit out before a palatalized sound, including any sound that underwent any of the palatalization processes in Proto-Romance or later: e.g. ''pacem'' "peace" > PWR ''*padʲzʲe'' > OF ''paiz'' /paits/; ''punctum'' "point" > PWR ''*ponjtʲo'' > ''*poɲtʲo'' > OF ''point''. During the Old French period, /l/ before a consonant vocalized to /w/, producing many new falling diphthongs: e.g. ''dulcem'' "sweet" > PWR ''*doltʲsʲe'' > OF ''dolz'' > ''douz'' /douts/; ''fallit'' "it lacks" > OF ''falt'' > ''faut'' "it is necessary"; ''bellum'' "beautiful" > OF ''beau'' . By the end of the Middle French period, ''all'' of these falling diphthongs disappeared and were replaced by either monophthongs or rising diphthongs: proto OF > early OF > modern spelling ⟨ai ei i oi ui oi ui au eau eu i ou ou u⟩ > modern French .
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'' > ''donne'' , ''fēminam'' > ''femme'' . Other vowels remained diphthongized, and were dramatically lowered: ''fīnem'' "end" > ''fin'' (often pronounced ); ''linguam'' "tongue" > ''langue'' ; ''ūnum'' "one" > ''un'' .
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'' ; ''canem, canēs'' "dog(s)" > PWR *kane, ˈkanes'' > *''can, ˈcanes'' > ''cão, cães'' ; ''ratiōnem, ratiōnēs'' "reason(s)" > PWR *''raˈdʲzʲone, raˈdʲzʲones'' > *''raˈdzon, raˈdzones'' > ''razão, razões'' (Brazil), (Portugal). Sometimes the nasalization was eliminated: ''lūna'' "moon" > Old Portuguese ''lũa'' > ''lua''; ''vēna'' "vein" > Old Portuguese ''vẽa'' > ''veia''. Nasal vowels that remained actually tend to be raised (rather than lowered, as in French): ''fīnem'' "end" > ''fim'' ; ''centum'' "hundred" > PWR tʲsʲɛnto'' > ''cento'' ; ''pontem'' "bridge" > PWR pɔnte'' > ''ponte'' (Brazil), (Portugal). In Portugal, vowels before a nasal consonant have become denasalized, but in Brazil they remain heavily nasalized.
Front-rounded vowels
Characteristic of the
Gallo-Romance languages and
Rhaeto-Romance languages are the
front rounded vowels . All of these languages show an unconditional change /u/ > /y/, e.g. ''lūnam'' > French ''lune'' , Occitan . Many of the languages in Switzerland and Italy show the further change /y/ > /i/. Also very common is some variation of the French development (lengthened in
open syllables) > > , with mid back vowels diphthongizing in some circumstances and then re-monophthongizing into mid-front rounded vowels. (French has both and , with developing from in certain circumstances.)
Unstressed vowels
| +Evolution of unstressed vowels in early Italo-Western Romance
| Latin
|
Proto-Romance
|
Stressed |
rowspan=2Non-finalunstressed || colspan=5|Final-unstressed |
| Original
| ! LaterItalo-Romance
|
! LaterWestern-Romance
|
! Gallo-Romance
|
! PrimitiveFrench
|
| !colspan=2 |
!Acad.1
|
!width="60"IPA !! colspan="6"|IPA |
| ! ''a,ā''
|
|
a |
colspan=2 || | |
|
| ''e,ae''
| |
ę |
| | |
|
|
∅; (prop) |
∅; (prop)
|
| ''ē,oe''
| |
ẹ |
|
| ''i,y''
|
|
| ! ''ī,ȳ''
|
|
i |
colspan=2 || colspan=2| |
| ''o''
| |
ǫ |
| | |
|
|
| ''ō,(au)''
| |
ọ |
|
| ''u''
| |
|
| ''ū''
| |
u |
|
| ''au''''(most words)''
| |
au |
colspan=2 || colspan=5|N/A |
|
There was more variability in the result of the unstressed vowels. Originally in Proto-Romance, the same nine vowels developed in unstressed as stressed syllables, and in Sardinian, they coalesced into the same five vowels in the same way.
In Italo-Western Romance, however, vowels in unstressed syllables were significantly different from stressed vowels, with yet a third outcome for final unstressed syllables. In non-final unstressed syllables, the seven-vowel system of stressed syllables developed, but then the low-mid vowels merged into the high-mid vowels . This system is still preserved, largely or completely, in all of the conservative Romance languages (e.g. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan).
In final unstressed syllables, results were somewhat complex. One of the more difficult issues is the development of final short ''-u'', which appears to have been raised to rather than lowered to , as happened in all other syllables. However, it is possible that in reality, final 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 (see above). This suggests the development ''-us'' > > , but ''-um'' > > .
| +Examples of evolution of final unstressed vowels
| English !! Latin !! Proto-Italo-Western !! ConservativeCentral Italian !! Italian !! Spanish !! Catalan !! Old French
|
| one (fem.) |
''ūnam'' |
una | | una |
una |
una |
una |
une
|
| door |
''portam'' | | porta |
porta |
porta |
puerta |
porta |
porte
|
| seven |
''septem'' | | sette |
sette |
sette |
siete |
set |
set
|
| sea |
''mare'' | | mare |
mare |
mare |
mar |
mar |
mer
|
| peace |
''pācem'' | | pace |
pace |
pace |
paz |
pau |
paiz
|
| part |
''partem'' | | parte |
parte |
parte |
parte |
part |
part
|
| mother |
''mātrem'' | | matre |
matre |
madre |
madre |
mare |
meḍre
|
| twenty |
''vīgintī'' | | veenti |
vinti |
venti |
veinte |
vint |
vint
|
| four |
''quattuor'' | | quattro |
quattro |
quattro |
cuatro |
quatre |
quatre
|
| eight |
''octō'' | | octo |
ɔtto |
otto |
ocho |
vuit |
huit
|
| when |
''quandō'' | | quando |
quando |
quando |
cuando |
quan |
quant
|
| fourth |
''quartum'' | | quartu |
quartu |
quarto |
cuarto |
quart |
quart
|
| one (masc.) |
''ūnum'' | | unu |
unu |
uno |
uno |
un |
un
|
| port |
''portum'' | | portu |
portu |
porto |
puerto |
port |
port
|
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). 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.
In primitive
Old French (one of the
Gallo-Romance languages), these two remaining vowels merged into .
Various later changes happened in individual languages, e.g.:
In French, most final consonants were dropped, and then final was also dropped. The 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" vs. ''porte'' "door" . These changes also eliminated the difference between singular and plural in most words: ''ports'' "ports" (still ), ''portes'' "doors" (still ). Final consonants reappear in liaison contexts (in close connection with a following vowel-initial word), e.g. ''nous'' "we" vs. ''nous avons'' "we have", ''il fait'' "he does" vs. ''fait-il?" "does he?".
In Catalan, final unstressed /as/ > /es/.
In Portuguese, final unstressed /o/ and /u/ were apparently preserved intact for a while, since final unstressed /u/, but not /o/ or /os/, triggered
metaphony (see above). Final-syllable unstressed /o/ was raised in preliterary times to /u/, but always still written ⟨o⟩. At some point (perhaps in late
Old Portuguese), final-syllable unstressed /e/ was raised to /i/ (but still written ⟨e⟩); this remains in
Brazilian Portuguese, but has developed to in
European Portuguese.
Intertonic vowels
The so-called ''intertonic vowels'' are those unstressed vowels not either initial or final, i.e. those vowels that are between the initial or final syllable and the ''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: ''vetulum'' "old" > ''veclum'' > Italian ''vecchio'', French ''vieil'', Spanish ''viejo'', 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 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:
''septimānam'' "week" > Italian ''settimana'', Romanian ''săptămână'' but Spanish/Portuguese ''semana'', French ''semaine'', Catalan ''setmana''
''quattuordecim'' "fourteen" > Italian ''quattordici'', but Spanish ''catorce'', Portuguese/French ''quatorze''
*''metipsimum'' > *''medisimum'' > Italian ''medesimo'' but Spanish ''mismo'', Portuguese ''mesmo'', Old French ''meḍesme'' > French ''même''
*''bonitātem'' > Italian ''bonità'' or ''bontà'', Romanian ''bunătate'' but Spanish ''bondad'', Portuguese ''bondade'', Old French ''bonté''
''collocāre'' "to place" > Spanish ''colgar'' "to hang", French ''coucher'' "to lie (down), sleep"
''commūnicāre'' "to take communion" > Romanian ''cuminecare'' but Portuguese ''comungar'', Spanish ''comulgar'', Old French ''comungier''
''carricāre'' "to carry (in a chariot)" > Spanish ''cargar'' "to load", French ''charger'' "to load"
''fabricam'' "forge" > > Spanish ''fragua'', Portuguese ''forjar/fabricar'', French ''forge''
''disjējūnāre'' "to breakfast" > Old French ''disner'' > French ''dîner'' "to dine" (but ''disjējūnat'' > Old French ''desjune'' "he dines" > French ''(il) déjeune'' "he eats lunch")
''adjūtāre'' "to help" > Italian ''aiutare'', Romanian ''ajuta'' but French ''aider'' (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. *''offerēscere'' "to offer" > Portuguese ''oferecer'' vs. Spanish ''ofrecer'', French ''offrir'' (< *''offerīre''); ''-ābilem'' > Italian ''-evole'', Portuguese ''-ável'' vs. Spanish/French ''-able''. French, on the other hand, drops even intertonic /a/ after the stress: ''stephanum'' > Spanish ''Estévan'' but Old French ''Estievne'' > French ''Étienne''. Many cases of /a/ before the stress also ultimately dropped in French: ''sacramentum'' "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 19th century, where, after the Roman retreat, literacy was reintroduced through the
Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, a Slavic influence. A Cyrillic alphabet was also used for Romanian (Moldovan) in the
USSR. The non-Christian populations of Spain also used the scripts of their religions (
Arabic and
Hebrew) to write Romance languages such as
Ladino and
Mozarabic in ''
aljamiado''.
Letters
{|class="wikitable" style="float: right; text-align: center;"
|+Spelling of results of palatalization and related sounds
! Sound !! Spanish !! Portuguese !! French !! Italian !! Romanian
|-
| /k/, not + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=5|⟨c⟩
|-
| /k/ + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=3|⟨qu⟩ || colspan=2|⟨ch⟩
|-
| palatalized /k/ (/tʃ/~/s/~/θ/), + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=5|⟨c⟩
|-
| palatalized /k/ (/tʃ/~/s/~/θ/), not + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || ⟨z⟩ || colspan=2|⟨ç⟩ || colspan=2|⟨ci⟩
|-
| /kw/, not + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=5|⟨qu⟩
|-
| /kw/ + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || ⟨cu⟩ || colspan=4|⟨qu⟩
|-
| /g/, not + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=5|⟨g⟩
|-
| /g/ + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=3|⟨gu⟩ || colspan=2|⟨gh⟩
|-
| palatalized /g/ (/dʒ/~/ʒ/~/x/), + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=5|⟨g⟩
|-
| palatalized /g/ (/dʒ/~/ʒ/~/x/), not + ⟨e, i, y⟩ || colspan=3|⟨j⟩ || colspan=2|⟨gi⟩
|-
| /gw/, not + ⟨e ,i, y⟩ || colspan=5|⟨gu⟩
|-
| /gw/ +⟨e, i, y⟩ || ⟨gü⟩ || colspan=4|⟨gu⟩
|-
| (former) /ʎ/ || ⟨ll⟩ || ⟨lh⟩ || ⟨il(l)⟩ || ⟨gli⟩ || —
|-
| /ɲ/ || ⟨ñ⟩ || ⟨nh⟩ || colspan=2|⟨gn⟩ || —
|}
The Romance languages are written with the classical Latin alphabet of 23 letters – ''A'', ''B'', ''C'', ''D'', ''E'', ''F'', ''G'', ''H'', ''I'', ''K'', ''L'', ''M'', ''N'', ''O'', ''P'', ''Q'', ''R'', ''S'', ''T'', ''V'', ''X'', ''Y'', ''Z'' – subsequently modified and augmented in various ways. In particular, the single Latin letter ''V'' split into ''V'' (consonant) and ''U'' (vowel), and the letter ''I'' split into ''I'' and ''J''. The Latin letter ''K'' and the new letter ''W'', which came to be widely used in Germanic languages, are seldom used in most Romance languages – mostly for unassimilated foreign names and words.
While most of the 23 basic Latin letters have maintained their phonetic value, for some of them it has diverged considerably; and the new letters added since the Middle Ages have been put to different uses in different scripts. Some letters, notably ''H'' and ''Q'', have been variously combined in digraphs or trigraphs (see below) to represent phonetic phenomena that could not be recorded with the basic Latin alphabet, or to get around previously established spelling conventions. Most languages added auxiliary marks (diacritics) to some letters, for these and other purposes.
The spelling rules of most Romance languages are fairly simple, but subject to considerable regional variation. The letters with most conspicuous phonetic variations, between Romance languages or with respect to Latin, are
:B: May alternate in pronunciation with ''v'', for example in some variants of Spanish.
:C: Generally a "hard" , but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before ''e'', ''i'', or ''y''.
:G: Generally a "hard" , but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before ''e'', ''i'', or ''y''. In some languages, like Spanish, the hard ''g'' is pronounced as a fricative after vowels. In Romansch, the soft ''g'' is a voiced palatal plosive or a voiced alveolo-palatal affricate .
:H: Silent in most languages; used to form various digraphs. But represents in Romanian, Walloon and Gascon Occitan.
:J: Represents a fricative in most languages, or the palatal approximant in Romansh and in several of the languages of Italy. Italian does not use this letter in native words. Usually pronounced like the soft ''g'' (except in Romansch and the languages of Italy).
:Q: As in Latin, its phonetic value is that of a hard ''c'', and in native words it is always followed by a (sometimes silent) ''u''. Romanian does not use this letter in native words.
:S: Generally voiceless , but voiced between vowels in most languages. In Spanish, Romanian, Galician and several varieties of Italian, however, it is always pronounced voiceless. At the end of syllables, it may represent special allophonic pronunciations. In Romansh, it also stands for a voiceless or voiced fricative, or , before certain consonants.
:W: No Romance language uses this letter in native words, with the exception of Walloon.
:X: Its pronunciation is rather variable, both between and within languages. In the Middle Ages, the languages of Iberia used this letter to denote the voiceless postalveolar fricative , which is still the case in Modern Catalan and Portuguese. With the Renaissance the classical pronunciation – or similar consonant clusters, such as , , or – were frequently reintroduced in latinisms and hellenisms. In Venetian it represents , and in Ligurian the voiced postalveolar fricative . Italian does not use this letter in native words.
:Y: This letter is not used in most languages, with the prominent exceptions of French and Spanish, where it represents before vowels (or various similar fricatives such as the palatal fricative , in Spanish), and the vowel or semivowel elsewhere.
:Z: In most languages it represents the sound , but in Italian it denotes the affricates and (which, although not normally in contrast, are usually strictly assigned lexically in any single variety: Standard Italian ''gazza'' 'magpie' always with , ''mazza'' 'club, mace' only with ), in Romansh the voiceless affricate , and in Galician and Spanish it denotes either the voiceless dental fricative or .
Otherwise, letters that are not combined as digraphs generally have the same sounds as in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), whose design was, in fact, greatly influenced by the 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 sound value. The concept (but not the actual combinations) derives 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 following , , and respectively. Some of the digraphs used in modern scripts are:
:CI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy and Romanian to represent before ''A'', ''O'', or ''U''.
:CH: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent before ''E'' or ''I''; in Occitan, Spanish, Astur-leonese and Galician; or in Romansh before ''A'', ''O'' or ''U''; and in most other languages. In Catalan it is used in some old spelling conventions for .
:DD: used in Sicilian and Sardinian to represent the voiced retroflex plosive . In recent history more accurately transcribed as ''DDH''.
:DJ: used in Walloon and Catalan for .
:GI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy and Romanian to represent before ''A'', ''O'', or ''U'', and in Romansh to represent or or (before ''A'', ''E'', ''O'', and ''U'') or
:GH: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent before ''E'' or ''I'', and in Galician for the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (not standard sound).
:GL: used in Romansh before consonants and ''I'' and at the end of words for .
:GLI: used in Italian and Romansh for .
:GN: used in French, Italian, Romance languages in Italy and Romansh for , as in ''champignon'' or ''gnocchi''.
:GU: used before ''E'' or ''I'' to represent or in all Romance languages except Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Romansh, and Romanian (which use GH instead).
:IG: used at the end of word in Catalan for , as in ''maig'', ''safareig'' or ''enmig''.
:IX: used between vowels or at the end of word in Catalan for , as in ''caixa'' or ''calaix''.
:LH: used in Portuguese and Occitan .
:LL: used in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Astur-leonese, Norman and Dgèrnésiais, originally for which has merged in some cases with . Represents in French unless it follows ''I'' (''i'') when it represents (or in some dialects). It's used in Occitan for a long
:L·L: used in Catalan for a geminate consonant .
:NH: used in Portuguese and Occitan for , used in official Galician for .
:N-: used in Piedmontese and Ligurian for between two vowels.
:NN: used in Leonese for ,
:NY: used in Catalan for .
:QU: represents in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, and Romansh; in French, Astur-leonese and Spanish (normally before ''e'' or ''i''); (before ''e'' or ''i'') or (normally before ''a'' or ''o'') in Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese.
:RR: used between vowels in several languages (Occitan, Catalan, Spanish...) to denote a trilled or a guttural R, instead of the flap .
:SC: used before ''E'' or ''I'' in Italian and Romance languages in Italy for , and in French, Portuguese, Catalan and American Spanish as in words of certain etymology (notice this would be in standard peninsular Spanish)
:SCH: used in Romansh for or .
:SCI: used in Italian and Romance languages in Italy to represent before ''A'', ''O'', or ''U''.
:SH: used in Aranese Occitan for .
:SS: used in French, Portuguese, Piedmontese, Romansh, Occitan, and Catalan for between vowels.
:TS: used in Catalan for .
:TG: used in Romansh for or . In Catalan is used for before ''E'' and ''I'', as in ''metge'' or ''fetge''.
:TH: used in Jèrriais for ; used in Aranese for either or .
:TJ: used between vowels and before ''A'', ''O'' or ''U'', in Catalan for , as in ''sotjar'' or ''mitjó''.
:TSCH: used in Romansh for .
:TX: used at the beginning or at the end of word or between vowels in Catalan for , as in ''txec'', ''esquitx'' or ''atxa''.
:TZ: used in Catalan for .
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 or , , and , 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 , ''SS'S'' is a long , and ''T'T'' is a long . Phonemic contrast of geminates vs. 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 the ''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 '''' () and Spanish '''' ().
The following are the most common use of diacritics in Romance languages.
Vowel quality: the system of marking close-mid vowels with an acute, ''é'', and open-mid vowels with a grave accent, ''è'', is widely used (in Catalan, French, Italian, etc.) Portuguese, however, uses the circumflex (''ê'') for the former, and the acute (''é''), for the latter.
Nasality: Portuguese marks nasal vowels with a tilde (''ã'') when they occur before other written vowels and in some other instances. While not frequent among the other Romance languages, the use of this symbol generally to indicate nasality has been incorporated in the orthographies of many South American indigenous languages (Guarani is an example).
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. In Romanian some palatalized consonants are indicated with ''i'' , in the way Russian does with "e" and "и".
Diaeresis: 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. In the Spanish word ''pingüino'' (penguin), the letter ''u'' is pronounced, although normally it is silent in the digraph ''gu'' when this is followed by an ''e'' or an ''i''. Other Romance languages that use the diaeresis in this fashion are French, Catalan and Occitan. Brazilian Portuguese is no longer adopting diaeresis since its last orthographic reform of 2009. Some North-Italian languages use the Diaeresis to mark vowel quality: Piedmontese ''ë'' is pronounced [ɘ], ä and ö are used in Emilian-Romagnol and Ligurian.
Stress: the stressed vowel in a polysyllabic word may be indicated with the acute, ''é'' (in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan), or the grave accent, ''è'' (Italian, Catalan, Romansh). The orthographies of French and Romanian do not mark stress. In Italian and Romansh orthography, indicating stress with a diacritic is only required when it falls on the last syllable of a word.
Homophones: words that are pronounced exactly or nearly the same way, but have different meanings, can be differentiated by a diacritic. An acute accent, for example, is used in Spanish to distinguish ''si'' ("if") from ''sí'' ("yes"), and in Catalan to distinguish ''os'' ("bone") from ''ós'' ("bear"). A grave accent is used in French to distinguish ''ou'' ("or") from ''où'' ("where"); in Italian and Romansh to distinguish ''e'' ("and") from ''è'' ("is"); and in Catalan to distinguish ''mà'' ("hand") from ''ma'' ("my"). The circumflex can also have this function in French, sometimes. Often, such words are monosyllables, the accented one being phonetically stressed, while the unaccented one is a clitic; examples are the Spanish clitics ''de'', ''se'', and ''te'' (a preposition and two personal pronouns), versus the stressed words ''dé'', ''sé'', and ''té'' (two verbs and a noun).
Less widespread diacritics in the Romance languages are the breve (in Romanian, ''ă'') and the ring (in Wallon and the Bolognese dialect of Emiliano-Romagnolo, ''å''). The French orthography includes the etymological ligatures ''œ'' and (more rarely) ''æ''. The use of the circumflex in French is partly etymological as well.
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 15th and 16th centuries.
In particular, all Romance languages presently 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, along with a selection of minority languages.
{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 85%"
|-
!width="75"|Latin
| rowspan="17" |
!Sardinian
!Italian
!Sicilian
!Romanian
!Friulian
!Piedmontese
!Romansh
!French
!Occitan
!Catalan
!Aragonese
!Castilian
!Ladino
!Asturian
!Mirandese
!Galician
!Portuguese
!Venetian
!Lombard
!Emilian
| rowspan="17" |
!English
|-
|''aquam''
|abba
|acqua
|acqua
|apǎ
|aghe
|eva
|aua
|eau
|aiga
|aigua
|augua
|agua
|agua
|agua
|auga
|auga
|água
|aqua
|aqua
|âcua
|water
|-
|''altum''
|artu
|alto
|autu
|înalt
|alt
|àut
|aut
|haut
|n-aut
|alt
|alto
|alto
|alto
|altu
|alto
|alto
|alto
|alto
|alt
|èlt
|high
|-
|''caballum''
|cuaddu
|cavallo
|cavaddu
|cal
|ĉhaval
|caval
|chaval
|cheval
|caval
|cavall
|caballo
|caballo
|kavayo
|caballu
|cabalo
|cabalo
|cavalo
|cavaeo
|cavall
|cavâl
|horse
|-
|''ego''
|deo
|io
|ju/jè
|eu
|jo
|i(/mi)
|jau
|je
|ieu/jo
|jo
|yo
|yo
|yo
|yo
|you
|eu
|eu
|(mi)
|(mì)
|(mé)
|I
|-
|''facere''
|faghere
|fare
|fari
|face
|fâ
|fé
|far
|faire
|far/fàser
|fer
|fer
|hacer
|azer
|facer
|fazer
|facer
|fazer
|far
|fà
|fèr
|to do
|-
|''focum''
|fogu
|fuoco
|focu
|foc
|fûc
|feu
|fieu
|feu
|fuòc
|foc
|fuego
|fuego
|huego
|fueu
|fuogo
|fogo
|fogo
|fogo
|foeugh
|fûg
|fire
|-
|''insulam''
|isula
|isola
|isula
|((insulǎ))
|îsule
|ìsola
|insla
|île
|iscla
|illa
|isla/isola
|isla
|isola/adá
|isla
|ilha
|illa
|ilha
|isoea
|isola
|îsla
|island
|-
|''lactem''
|latte
|latte
|latti
|lapte
|lat
|làit
|latg
|lait
|lach
|llet
|leit
|leche
|leche
|lleche
|lheite
|leite
|leite
|late
|latt
|lât
|milk
|-
|''linguam''
|limba
|lingua
|lingua
|limbǎ
|lenghe
|lenga
|lingua
|langue
|lenga
|llengua
|luenga
|lengua
|lingua
|llingua
|lhéngua
|lingua
|língua
|lengoa
|lengua
|langua
|tongue/language
|-
|''nostrum''
|nostru
|nostro
|nostru
|nostru
|nestri
|nòst
|noss
|notre
|nòstre
|nostre
|nuestro
|nuestro
|muestro
|nuesu
|nuosso
|noso
|nosso
|nostro
|noster
|nòster
|our
|-
|''novum''
|nou
|nuovo
|novu
|nou
|gnove
|neuv
|nov
|nouveau
|nòu
|nou
|nuebo
|nuevo
|muevo
|nuevu
|nuobo
|novo
|novo
|novo
|noeuv
|nôv
|new
|-
|''pellem''
|pedde
|pelle
|peddi
|piele
|piel
|pel
|pel
|peau
|pèl
|pell
|piel
|piel
|pyél
|piel
|piel
|pel
|pele
|pée
|pell
|pèl
|skin
|-
|''pluviam''
|proìda
|pioggia
|chiuvuta
|ploaie
|ploe
|pieuva
|plievgia
|pluie
|pluèja
|pluja
|plebia
|lluvia
|luvya
|lluvia
|chuba
|chuvia/choiva
|chuva
|piova
|pioeuva
|piôva
|rain
|-
|''trēs''
|tres
|tre
|tri
|trei
|tre
|tre
|trais
|trois
|tres
|tres
|tres
|tres
|tres
|trés
|trés
|tres
|três
|tre
|trii
|trî (m)/trai (f)
|three
|-
!width="75"|Latin
!Sardinian
!Italian
!Sicilian
!Romanian
!Friulian
!Piedmontese
!Romansh
!French
!Occitan
!Catalan
!Aragonese
!Spanish
!Ladino
!Asturian
!Mirandese
!Galician
!Portuguese
!Venetian
!Lombard
!Emilian
!English
|}
Bibliography
Holtus, Günter/Metzeltin, Michael/Schmitt, Christian: ''Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik. (LRL)'' Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988–2005 (12 volumes).
Lindenbauer, Petrea/Metzeltin, Michael/Thir, Margit: ''Die romanischen Sprachen. Eine einführende Übersicht''. G. Egert, Wilhelmsfeld 1995.
Metzeltin, Michael: ''Las lenguas románicas estándar. Historia de su formación y de su uso''. Academia de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu 2004.
See also
Latins
Legacy of the Roman Empire
Italo-Celtic
References
External links
Michael de Vaan, ''Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages,'' Brill, 2008, 826pp. (part available freely online)
''Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik (LRL),'' edd. Holtus / Metzeltin / Schmitt
Michael Metzeltin, ''Las lenguas románicas estándar. Historia de su formación y de su uso'', Oviedo, 2004
Orbis Latinus, site on Romance languages
Hugh Wilkinson's papers on Romance Languages
Spanish is a Romance language, but what does that have to do with the type of romance between lovers?, dictionary.com
Category:Latino-Faliscan languages
af:Romaanse tale
als:Romanische Sprachen
ar:لغات رومنسية
an:Luengas romances
arc:ܠܫܢܐ ܪܘܡܐܢܣܝܐ
frp:Lengoues romanes
ast:Llingües romániques
az:Roman dilləri
bn:রোমান্স ভাষাসমূহ
zh-min-nan:Romance gí-giân
be:Раманскія мовы
be-x-old:Раманскія мовы
bcl:Mga Latin
bg:Романски езици
bar:Romanische Språchn
bo:ལ་ཊིན་ནས་ཆད་པའི་ཡུལ་སྐད།
bs:Romanski jezici
br:Yezhoù romanek
ca:Llengües romàniques
cs:Románské jazyky
co:Lingue rumaniche
cy:Ieithoedd Romáwns
da:Romanske sprog
de:Romanische Sprachen
dsb:Romaniske rěcy
et:Romaani keeled
el:Ρομανικές γλώσσες
eml:Languv latén
es:Lenguas romances
eo:Latinida lingvaro
ext:Luenga romanci
eu:Hizkuntza erromantzeak
fa:زبانهای رومیتبار
fr:Langues romanes
fy:Romaanske talen
fur:Lenghis romanzis
ga:Teangacha Rómánsacha
gv:Çhengaghyn Romanagh
gd:Cànanan Ròmanach
gl:Linguas románicas
ko:로망스어군
hi:रोमांस भाषाएँ
hsb:Romaniske rěče
hr:Romanski jezici
io:Latinida linguo
id:Rumpun bahasa Roman
ia:Linguas romanic
os:Ромайнаг æвзæгтæ
is:Rómönsk tungumál
it:Lingue romanze
he:שפות רומאניות
ka:რომანული ენები
kk:Роман тілдері
kw:Romanek
sw:Lugha za Kirumi
ht:Lang roman
ku:Zimanên romanî
lad:Linguas romanses
la:Linguae Romanicae
lv:Romāņu valodas
lt:Romanų kalbos
li:Roemaanse tale
lmo:Lenguv Rumanz
hu:Újlatin nyelvek
mk:Романски јазици
mt:Lingwi Romaniċi
mr:रोमान्स भाषासमूह
ms:Bahasa-bahasa Romawi
nah:Romatlahtōlli
nl:Romaanse talen
ja:ロマンス諸語
nap:Lengue neolatine
no:Romanske språk
nn:Romanske språk
nrm:Laungue romanne
nov:Latinidi lingues
oc:Lengas romanicas
pnb:رومنی بولیاں
pcd:Langues romanes
pms:Lenghe romanze
pl:Języki romańskie
pt:Línguas românicas
ro:Limbi romanice
rmy:Romanikane chhiba
rm:Linguas romanas (sursilvan)
qu:Romanu rimaykuna
ru:Романские языки
se:Románalaš gielat
sc:Limbas romanzas
sco:Romance leids
stq:Romanisk
scn:Lingui rumanzi
simple:Romance languages
sk:Románske jazyky
sl:Romanski jeziki
cu:Романьсци ѩꙁꙑци
sr:Романски језици
sh:Romanski jezici
fi:Romaaniset kielet
sv:Romanska språk
tl:Mga wikang Romanse
ta:உரோமானிய மொழிகள்
tt:Роман телләре
th:กลุ่มภาษาโรมานซ์
tr:Roman dilleri
uk:Романські мови
vi:Nhóm ngôn ngữ Rôman
wa:Lingaedjes romans
vls:Romaansche toaln
zh-yue:羅曼語族
diq:Zıwanê Romanki
zea:Romaonse taelen
zh:罗曼语族
![The Little Mermaid - Part of your World - [Romance MultiLanguage] - Part 1](http://web.archive.org./web/20120602213321im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YWfBXDwX3lM/0.jpg "The Little Mermaid - Part of your World - [Romance MultiLanguage] - Part 1")
