Romance languages

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EthnicityRomance peoples (adopted speakers)
Originated in Mediterranean and western Europe; now also spoken all over the Americas, much of Africa and in parts of Southeast Asia and Oceania
Linguistic classificationIndo-European
Early form
ISO 639-2 / 5roa
Linguasphere51- (phylozone)
European Romance languages

The Romance languages (also called Romanic languages or Neo-Latin languages) are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the third and eighth centuries[2] and that form a subgroup of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family.

Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas.[3] This is especially the case for French, which is in widespread use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Maghreb.

The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (470 million), Portuguese (250 million), French (150 million), Italian (90 million),[4] and Romanian (25 million).[5]

Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the modern Romance languages are given; for example, Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility.[6] The following, more extensive list[citation needed], includes 35 current, living languages, and one recently extinct language, Dalmatian:



Romance languages are the continuation of Vulgar Latin, the popular and colloquial sociolect of Latin spoken by soldiers, settlers, and merchants of the Roman Empire, as distinguished from the classical form of the language spoken by the Roman upper classes, the form in which the language was generally written.[7] Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, made Latin the dominant native language in continental Western Europe. Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany, Pannonia and the whole Balkans.

During the Empire's decline, and after its fragmentation and the collapse of Western half in the fifth and sixth centuries, the spoken varieties of Latin became more isolated from each other, with the western dialects coming under heavy Germanic influence (the Goths and Franks in particular) and the eastern dialects coming under Slavic influence.[8][9] The dialects diverged from classical Latin at an accelerated rate and eventually evolved into a continuum of recognizably different typologies. The colonial empires established by Portugal, Spain, and France from the fifteenth century onward spread their languages to the other continents to such an extent that about two-thirds of all Romance language speakers today live outside Europe.



The term Romance comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, "in Roman", derived from Romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui, "to speak in Roman" (that is, the Latin vernacular), contrasted with latine loqui, "to speak in Latin" (Medieval Latin, the conservative version of the language used in writing and formal contexts or as a lingua franca), and with barbarice loqui, "to speak in Barbarian" (the non-Latin languages of the peoples living outside the Roman Empire).[10] From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, or "in the Roman vernacular".[citation needed]

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 heroic adventures and courtly love, were composed in the vernacular and came to be called "romances".[citation needed]



English: She always closes[11] the window before she dines / before dining.[12]

Latin (Ea) semper antequam cenat fenestram claudit.
Vulgar Latin (Ea) claudi[t] semper illa fenestra antequam de cenare
Apulian (Jèdde) akjude sèmbe la fenèstre prime de mangè.
Aragonese (Ella) zarra siempre a finestra antes de cenar.
Aromanian (Ea/Nâsa) ãncljidi/nkidi totna firida/fireastra ninti di tsinã.
Asturian (Ella) pieslla siempres la ventana enantes de cenar.
Northern Corsican Ella chjode/chjude sempre lu/u purtellu avanti/nanzu di cenà.
Southern Corsican Edda/Idda sarra/serra sempri u purteddu nanzu/prima di cinà.
Extremaduran (Ella) afecha siempri la ventana antis de cenal.
French Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper.
Gallurese Idda chjude sempri lu balconi primma di cinà.
Italian (Lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare.
Judaeo-Spanish אֵילייה סֵירּה סײֵמפּרֵי לה בֵֿינטאנה אנטֵיס דֵי סֵינאר.‎; Ella cerra siempre la ventana antes de cenar.
Ladin Ëra stlüj dagnora la finestra impröma de cenè. (badiot) Ëila stluj for l viere dan maië da cëina. (Gherdëina)

Centro Cadore: La sera sempre la fenestra gnante de disna. Auronzo di Cadore: La sera sempro la fenestra davoi de disnà.

Leonese (Eilla) pecha siempre la ventana primeiru de cenare.
Lombard (east.)
Mozarabic إليا كلودت سامبرا لا فينسترا أبنت د جنار.Ella cloudet sempre la fainestra abante da cenare. (reconstructed)
Neapolitan Essa 'nzerra sempe 'a fenesta primma 'e cenà.
Norman Lli barre tréjous la crouésie devaunt de daîner.
Occitan (Ela) barra/tanca sempre/totjorn la fenèstra abans de sopar.
Picard Ale frunme tojours l' creusèe édvint éd souper.
Portuguese (Ela) fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar.
Romagnol (Lia) la ciud sëmpra la fnèstra prëma ad magnè.
Romanian Ea închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina.
Romansh Ella clauda/serra adina la fanestra avant ch'ella tschainia.
Southern Sardinian Issa serrat semp(i)ri sa bentana in antis de cenai
Northern Sardinian Issa serrat semper sa bentana in antis de chenàre.
Sassarese Edda sarra sempri lu balchoni primma di zinà.
Sicilian Iḍḍa chiui sempri la finesṭṛa anti ca pistìa/mancia.
Spanish (Ella) siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar/comer.
Tuscan Lei serra sempre la finestra avanti cena.
Umbrian Essa chjude sempre la finestra prima de cena'.
Walloon Ele sere todi li finiesse divant di soper.

Romance-based creoles and pidgins

Haitian Creole Li toujou fèmen fenèt la avan li mange.
Mauritian Creole Li pou touzour ferm lafnet la avan (li) manze.
Seychellois Creole Y pou touzour ferm lafnet aven y manze.
Chavacano Ta cerrá él con el puerta antes de cená.
Cape Verdean Creole Êl fechâ porta antes de jantâ.







Vulgar Latin[edit]

Length of the Roman rule and the Romance Languages[13]
Romance languages in Europe

Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of comprehensive research, and the literature is often hard to interpret or generalize. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, and forced resettlers, more likely to be natives of conquered lands than natives of Rome. In Western Europe, Latin gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages, which were related to it by a shared Indo-European origin. Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated the adoption of Latin.[14][15][16]

Vulgar Latin is believed to have already had most of the features shared by all Romance languages, which distinguish them from Classical Latin, such as the almost complete loss of the Latin grammatical case system and its replacement by prepositions; the loss of the neuter grammatical gender and comparative inflections; replacement of some verb paradigms by innovations (e.g. the synthetic future gave way to an originally analytic strategy now typically formed by infinitive + evolved present indicative forms of 'have'); the use of articles; and the initial stages of the palatalization of the plosives /k/, /g/, and /t/.

To some scholars, this suggests the form of Vulgar Latin that evolved into the Romance languages was around during the time of the Roman Empire (from the end of the first century BC), and was 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. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the same language, which was true until very approximately the second half of the 7th century. However, within two hundred years Latin became a dead language since "the Romanized people of Europe could no longer understand texts that were read aloud or recited to them,"[17] i.e. Latin had ceased to be a first language and became a foreign language that had to be learned, if the label Latin is constrained to refer to a state of the language frozen in past time and restricted to linguistic features for the most part typical of higher registers.

With the rise of the Roman Empire, Vulgar Latin spread first throughout Italy and then through southern, western, central, and southeast Europe, and northern Africa along parts of western Asia.[18]:1

Fall of the Western Roman Empire[edit]

During the political decline of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, there were large-scale migrations into the empire, and the Latin-speaking world was fragmented into several independent states. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by Huns. These incursions isolated the Vlachs from the rest of Romance-speaking Europe.

British 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 (as did Pannonian Romance in what is now Hungary, and Moselle Romance in Germany). But the Germanic tribes that had penetrated Roman Italy, Gaul, and Hispania eventually adopted Latin/Romance and the remnants of the culture of ancient Rome alongside existing inhabitants of those regions, and so Latin remained the dominant language there. In part due to regional dialects of the Latin language and local environments, several languages evolved from it.[18]:4

Fall of the Eastern Roman empire[edit]

Meanwhile, large-scale migrations into the Eastern Roman Empire started with the Goths and continued with Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Pechenegs, Hungarians and Cumans. The invasions of Slavs were the most thoroughgoing, and they partially reduced the Romanic element in the Balkans.[19] The invasion of the Turks and conquest of Constantinople in 1453 marked the end of the empire. The Slavs named the Romance-speaking population Vlachs, while the latter called themselves "Rumân" or "Român", from the Latin "Romanus"[20] The Daco-Roman dialect became fully distinct from the three dialects spoken South of the Danube—Macedo-Romanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian—during the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Romanians (sometimes called Vlachs or Wallachians) emerged as a people.[21]

Early Romance[edit]

Over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, local changes in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon accumulated to the point that the speech of any locale was noticeably different from another. In principle, differences between any two lects increased the more they were separated geographically, reducing easy mutual intelligibility between speakers of distant communities.[22] Clear evidence of some levels of change is found in the Reichenau Glosses, an eighth-century compilation of about 1,200 words from the fourth-century Vulgate of Jerome that had changed in phonological form or were no longer normally used, along with their eighth-century equivalents in proto-Franco-Provençal. The following are some examples with reflexes in several modern Romance languages for comparison:

English Classical / 4th cent.
8th cent.
Franco-Provençal French Romansh Italian Spanish Portuguese Romanian Catalan Sardinian Occitan Ladin
(un cop,
una volta)
(una borta) una fes
(un còp)
n iede


liberi infantes enfants enfants unfants (bambini) /
(niños) /
(pipius) / (pitzinnos) enfants mutons
to blow flare suflare soflar souffler suflar soffiare soplar soprar (a) sufla (bufar) sulai / sulare bufar suflé
the best (plur.) melior meliores los mèljörs les meilleurs ils megliers i migliori los mejores os melhores (optimi,
cei mai buni)
els millors is mellus / sos menzus Los/lei melhors i miëures
beautiful pulchra bella bèla belle bella bella (hermosa, bonita) /
bela /
frumoasă (bonica) /
bella bèla bela
in the mouth in ore in bucca en la boçhe dans la bouche in la bucca nella bocca en la boca na boca[23] (a îmbuca)[24] a la boca in sa buca dins la boca te la bocia

In all of the above examples, the words appearing in the fourth century Vulgate are the same words as would have been used in Classical Latin of c. 50 BC. It is likely that some of these words had already disappeared from casual speech by the time of the Glosses; but if so, they may well have been still widely understood, as there is no recorded evidence that the common people of the time had difficulty understanding the language.

By the 8th century, the situation was very different. During the late 8th century, Charlemagne, holding that "Latin of his age was by classical standards intolerably corrupt",[22]:6 successfully imposed Classical Latin as an artificial written vernacular for Western Europe. Unfortunately, this meant that parishioners could no longer understand the sermons of their priests, forcing the Council of Tours in 813 to issue an edict that priests needed to translate their speeches into the rustica romana lingua, an explicit acknowledgement of the reality of the Romance languages as separate languages from Latin.[22]:6 By this time, and possibly as early as the 6th century according to Price (1984),[22]:6 the Romance lects had split apart enough to be able to speak of separate Gallo-Romance, Ibero-Romance, Italo-Romance and Eastern Romance languages. Some researchers[who?] have postulated that the major divergences in the spoken dialects began or accelerated considerably in the 5th century, as the formerly widespread and efficient communication networks of the Western Roman Empire rapidly broke down, leading to the total disappearance of the Western Roman Empire by the end of the century. The critical period between the 5th–10th centuries AD is poorly documented because little or no writing from the chaotic "Dark Ages" of the 5th–8th centuries has survived, and writing after that time was in consciously classicized Medieval Latin, with vernacular writing only beginning in earnest in the 11th or 12th centuries. An exception such as the Oaths of Strasbourg is evidence that by the ninth century effective communication with a non-learnèd audience was carried out in evolved Romance.

A language that was closely related to medieval Romanian was spoken during the Dark Ages by Vlachs in the Balkans, Herzegovina, Dalmatia (Morlachs), Ukraine (Hutsuls), Poland (Gorals), Slovakia, and Czech Moravia, but gradually these communities lost their maternal language.[25]

Recognition of the vernaculars[edit]

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, some local vernaculars developed a written form and began to supplant Latin in many of its roles. In some countries, such as Portugal, this transition was expedited by force of law; whereas in others, such as Italy, many prominent poets and writers used the vernacular of their own accord – some of the most famous in Italy being Giacomo da Lentini and Dante Alighieri. Well before that, the vernacular was also used for practical purposes, such as the testimonies in the Placiti Cassinesi, written 960-963.

Uniformization and standardization[edit]


Modern status[edit]

European extent of Romance languages in the 20th century
Number of native speakers of each Romance language, as fractions of the total 690 million (2007)

The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish (Castilian), followed by Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian, which together cover a vast territory in Europe and beyond, and work as official and national languages in dozens of countries.

Romance languages in the World

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 the respective colonial empires. Spanish is an official language in nine countries of South America, home to about half that continent's population; in six countries of Central America (all except Belize); and in Mexico. In the Caribbean, it is official in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. In all these countries, Latin American Spanish is the vernacular language of the majority of the population, giving Spanish the most native speakers of any Romance language. In Africa it is an official language of Equatorial Guinea.

Portuguese, in its original homeland, Portugal, is spoken by virtually the entire population of 10 million. As the official language of Brazil, it is spoken by more than 200 million people in that country, as well as by neighboring residents of eastern Paraguay and northern Uruguay, accounting for a little more than half the population of South America. It is the official language of six African countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Príncipe), and is spoken as a first language by perhaps 30 million residents of that continent.[26] In Asia, Portuguese is co-official with other languages in East Timor and Macau, while most Portuguese-speakers in Asia—some 400,000[27]—are in Japan due to return immigration of Japanese Brazilians. In North America 1,000,000 people speak Portuguese as their home language.[28] In Oceania, Portuguese is the second most spoken Romance language, after French, due mainly to the number of speakers in East Timor. Its closest relative, Galician, has official status in the autonomous community of Galicia in Spain, together with Spanish.

Outside Europe, French is spoken natively most in the Canadian province of Quebec, and in parts of New Brunswick and Ontario. Canada is officially bilingual, with French and English being the official languages. In parts of the Caribbean, such as Haiti, French has official status, but most people speak creoles such as Haitian Creole as their native language. French also has official status in much of Africa, but relatively few native speakers. In France's overseas possessions, native use of French is increasing.


Romania did not establish a colonial empire, but beyond its native territory in southeastern Europe, the Romanian language is spoken as a minority language by autochthonous populations in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Hungary, and in some parts of the former Greater Romania (before 1945), as well as in Ukraine (Bukovina, Budjak) and in some villages between the Dniester and Bug rivers.[29] The Aromanian language is spoken today by Aromanians in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Greece.[30] Romanian also spread to other countries on the Mediterranean (especially the other Romance-speaking countries, most notably Italy and Spain), and elsewhere such as Israel, where it is the native language of five percent of the population,[31] and is spoken by many more as a secondary language. This is due to the large number of Romanian-born Jews who moved to Israel after World War II.[32] And finally, some 2.6 million people in the former Soviet republic of Moldova speak a variety of Romanian, called variously Moldovan or Romanian by them.

The total native speakers of Romance languages are divided as follows (with their ranking within the languages of the world in brackets):[33][34]

Catalan is the official language of Andorra. In Spain, it is co-official with Spanish (Castilian) in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands, and it is recognized, but not official, in La Franja, and in Aragon. In addition, it is spoken by many residents of Alghero, on the island of Sardinia, and it is co-official in that city. Galician, with more than a million native speakers, is official together with Spanish in Galicia, and has legal recognition in neighbouring territories in Castilla y León. A few other languages have official recognition on a regional or otherwise limited level; for instance, Asturian and Aragonese in Spain; Mirandese in Portugal; Friulan, Sardinian and Franco-Provençal in Italy; and Romansh in Switzerland.


Classification and related languages[edit]

Chart of Romance languages based on structural and comparative criteria, not on socio-functional ones. FP: Franco-Provençal, IR: Istro-Romanian.

The classification of the Romance languages is inherently difficult, because most of the linguistic area is a dialect continuum, and in some cases political biases can come into play. Along with Latin (which is not included among the Romance languages) and a few extinct languages of ancient Italy, they make up the Italic branch of the Indo-European family.[35]

Classical Latin
Vulgar Latin
Continental Romance
Sardinian language
African Romance
Eastern Romance
Western Romance
Balkan Romance

Proposed divisions[edit]

Extent of variation in development (very conservative to very innovative)
("to sing")
Latin Nuorese
Italian Spanish Portuguese Languedocien
Romanian French
Infinitive cantāre cantare
[kɐ̃ˈtar] 1
Past part. cantātum cantatu
Gerund cantandum cantande
1s indic. cantō canto
2s indic. cantās cantas
3s indic. cantat cantat
1p indic. cantāmus cantamus
[ˈkantum, kanˈtum]
2p indic. cantātis cantates
3p indic. cantant cantant
[ˈkantɛn, ˈkantɔ]
1s sbjv cantem cante
2s sbjv cantēs cantes
3s sbjv cantet cantet
1p sbjv cantēmus cantemus
[ˈkantum, kanˈtum]
2p sbjv cantētis cantetis
3p sbjv cantent cantent
[ˈkantɛn, ˈkantɔ]
2s impv. cantā canta
2p impv. cantāte cantate
1 Also [ɾ̥ ɻ̝̊ x χ ħ] are all possible allophones of [ɾ] in this position.



Italo-Western vs. Eastern vs. Sardinian[edit]




Outcome of Classical Latin vowels
Classical Latin Proto-Romance Sardinian Eastern Romance Italo-Western
long A
long E /e/ /e/ /e/
short I /ɪ/ /i/
long I /i/ /i/ /i/
long O /o/ /o/
short U /ʊ/ /u/ /u/
long U /u/ /u/


  • Phonemic lenition of intervocalic stops, which happens to the northwest but not to the southeast.
  • Degemination of geminate stops (producing new intervocalic single voiceless stops, after the old ones were lenited), which again happens to the northwest but not to the southeast.


  • Lenition of post-vocalic /p t k/ is widespread as an allophonic phonetic realization in Italy below the La Spezia-Rimini line, including Corsica and most of Sardinia.






Despite being the first Romance language to evolve from Vulgar Latin,[7] Sardinian does not fit well at all into this sort of division. It is clear that Sardinian became linguistically independent from the remainder of the Romance languages at an extremely early date, possibly already by the first century BC. 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 (first century BC). Sardinian has plurals in /s/ but post-vocalic lenition of voiceless consonants is normally limited to the status of an allophonic rule (e.g. [k]ane 'dog' but su [g]ane or su [ɣ]ane 'the dog'), and there are a few innovations unseen elsewhere, such as a change of /au/ to /a/. Use of su < ipsum as an article is a retained archaic feature that also exists in the Catalan of the Balearic Islands and that used to be more widespread in Occitano-Romance, and is known as article salat [ca] (literally the "salted article"), while Sardinian shares delabialization of earlier /kw/ and /gw/ with Romanian: Sard. abba, Rum. apă 'water'; Sard. limba, Rom. limbă 'language' (cf. Italian acqua, lingua).

Gallo-Romance languages[edit]

Gallo-Romance can be divided into the following subgroups:

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

The Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative (least conservative) among the Romance languages. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed earliest and appear in their most extreme manifestation in the Langue d'oïl, gradually spreading out along riverways and transalpine roads.

In some ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative. The older stages of many of the languages preserved a two-case system consisting of nominative and oblique, fully marked on nouns, adjectives and determiners, inherited almost directly from the Latin nominative and accusative and preserving a number of different declensional classes and irregular forms. The languages closest to the oïl epicenter preserve the case system the best, while languages at the periphery lose it early.

Notable characteristics of the Gallo-Romance languages are:

  • Early loss of unstressed final vowels other than /a/—a defining characteristic of the group.
  • Early, heavy reduction[clarification needed – reduction to what?] of unstressed vowels in the interior of a word (another defining characteristic).
  • Loss of final vowels phonemicized the long vowels that used to be automatic concomitants of stressed open syllables. These phonemic long vowels are maintained directly in many Northern Italian dialects; elsewhere, phonemic length was lost, but in the meantime many of the long vowels diphthongized, resulting in a maintenance of the original distinction. The langue d'oïl branch is again at the forefront of innovation, with no less than five of the seven long vowels diphthongizing (only high vowels were spared).
  • Front rounded vowels are present in all four branches.[clarification needed – branches of what?] /u/ usually fronts to /y/, and secondary mid front rounded vowels often develop from long /oː/ or /ɔː/.
  • Extreme lenition (i.e. multiple rounds of lenition) occurs in many languages especially in Langue d'oïl and many Gallo-Italian languages.

Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages[edit]


Creoles of French:

Creoles of Spanish:

Creoles of Portuguese:

  • Angolar (regional language in São Tomé and Principe)
  • Cape Verdean (Cape Verde's national language; includes several distinct languages)
  • Forro (regional language in São Tomé and Príncipe)
  • Kristang (Malaysia)
  • Macanese (Macau)
  • Papiamento (Dutch Antilles official language)
  • Upper Guinea (Guinea-Bissau's national language)

Auxiliary and constructed languages[edit]

Latin and the Romance languages have also served as the inspiration and basis of numerous auxiliary and constructed languages, so-called "neo-romantic languages".[37][38]



There are also languages created for artistic purposes only, such as Talossan. Because Latin is a very well attested ancient language, some amateur linguists have even constructed Romance languages that mirror real languages that developed from other ancestral languages. These include Brithenig (which mirrors Welsh), Breathanach[40] (mirrors Irish), Wenedyk (mirrors Polish), Þrjótrunn (mirrors Icelandic),[41] and Helvetian (mirrors German).[42]

Linguistic features[edit]

Basic features[edit]

Romance languages have a number of shared features across all languages:

  • Romance languages have a primarily subject–verb–object word order, with varying degrees of flexibility from one language to another. Constructions are predominantly of the head-first (right-branching) type. Adjectives, genitives and relative clauses all tend to follow their head noun, although (except in Romanian) determiners usually precede.
  • Verbs are inflected according to a complex morphology that marks person, number (singular or plural), tense, mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), and sometimes aspect or gender. Grammatical voice (active, passive, middle/reflexive) and some grammatical aspects (in particular, the perfect aspect) are expressed using periphrastic constructions, as in the Italian present perfect (passato prossimo) io ho amato/io sono stato amato "I have loved/I have been loved".
  • Word accent is of the stress (dynamic) type, rather than making use of pitch (as in Ancient Greek and some modern Slavic languages). Stress occurs more or less predictably on one of the last three syllables.

Changes from Classical Latin[edit]

Loss of the case system







Other changes
  • Loss of most traces of the neuter gender.




  • 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 or vowel+vowel), 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 /i/ or /u/ (e.g. Spanish veinte [ˈbejn̪te] "twenty", deuda [ˈdewða] "debt"; French paille [pɑj] "straw", caoutchouc [kawˈtʃu] "rubber"; Italian potei [poˈtej] "I could"), but these are normally analyzed as sequences of vowel and glide.[citation needed] 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 /aj ɐj ɛj ej ɔj oj uj aw ɛw ew iw (ow)/, where /ow/ (and to a lesser extent /ej/) appear only in some dialects. All except /aw ɛw/ appear frequently in verb or noun inflections. (Portuguese also has nasal diphthongs; see below.)
  • In modern spoken and literary Romanian, Slavic influences are evident in phonetics and morphology. Phonetic Slavicisms include the iotation of the initial e in words such as el, ea, este pronounced [jel], [ja], [jeste] (compare Spanish: el, ella, estamos, without the Slavic iotation effect).




  • bold: Appears in all 5 languages.
  • italic: Appears in 3–4 languages.
  • (parentheses): Appears in 2 languages.

Notable changes:

  • Romanian was influenced by Slavic phonology, mostly the palatalization of consonants in the plural form (for example pom-pomi and lup-lupi, pronounced [pomʲ] and [lupʲ]) and changing of /l/ to /r/, for instance Latin schola/scola > Slav. школа, școla > modern Romanian școală [ˈʃko̯alə] "school".


Romance consonants
Bilabial Labio-
Interdental Dental/
Palatal Velar/
Nasal m n ɲ
Plosive p b t d k ɡ
Affricate (ts) ((dz)) ()
Rhotic ɾ,r (ʁ)
Lateral l (ʎ)
Approximant j w

Lexical stress[edit]

Word stress was rigorously predictable in classical Latin except in a very few exceptional cases, either on the penultimate syllable (second from last) or antepenultimate syllable (third from last), according to the syllable weight of the penultimate syllable. 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. Minimal pairs distinguished only by stress exist in some languages, e.g. Italian Papa [ˈ] "Pope" vs. papà [pa.ˈpa] "daddy", or Spanish límite [ˈli.mi.te] "[a] limit", present subjunctive limite [li.ˈmi.te] "[that] [I/he] limit" and preterite limité [li.mi.ˈte] "[I] limited".



Nominal morphology[edit]



The Romance languages inherited from Latin two grammatical numbers, singular and plural; the only trace of a dual number comes from Latin ambō > Spanish and Portuguese ambos, Old Romanian îmbi > Romanian ambii, Old French ambe, Italian ambedue, entrambi.




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 similar phenomenon may be observed in Albanian (which is heavily Romance-influenced), and the category remains highly productive with a number of new words loaned or coined in the neuter ((një) hotel one hotel(m) vs. (tri) hotele three hotels (f)). (A few isolated nouns in Latin had different genders in the singular and plural, but this was an unrelated phenomenon; this is similarly the case with a few French nouns, such as amour, délice, orgue.)

Spanish also has vestiges of the neuter in the demonstrative adjectives: esto, eso, aquello, the pronoun ello (meaning "it") and the article lo (used to intensify adjectives). Portuguese also has neuter demonstrative adjectives: "isto", "isso", "aquilo" (meaning "this [near me]", "this/that [near you]", "that [far from the both of us]").

Remnants of the neuter, interpretable now as "a sub-class of the non-feminine gender" (Haase 2000:233), are vigorous in Italy in an area running roughly from Ancona to Matera and just north of Rome to Naples. Oppositions with masculine typically have been recategorized, so that neuter signifies the referent in general, while masculine indicates a more specific instance, with the distinction marked by the definite article. In Southeast Umbrian, for example, neuter lo pane is 'the bread', while masculine lu pane refers to an individual piece or loaf of bread. Similarly, neuter lo vinu is wine in general, while masculine lu vinu is a specific sort of wine, with the consequence that mass lo vinu has no plural counterpart, but lu vinu can take a sortal plural form li vini, referring to different types of wine. Phonological forms of articles vary by locale.[46]


Latin had an extensive case system, where all nouns were declined in six cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, dative, genitive, and ablative) and two numbers.[43] Many adjectives were additionally declined in three genders, leading to a possible 6 × 2 × 3 = 36 endings per adjective (although this was rarely the case). 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" "thou" "oneself" "he" "she" "we" "ye" "they"
Nominative yo él ella nosotros nosotras vosotros vosotras ellos ellas
Disjunctive ti
Accusative me te se lo la nos os los las
Dative le les
Genitive mío tuyo suyo suyo; de él suyo; de ella nuestro vuestro suyo; de ellos suyo; de ellas
Possessive mi tu su su
With con conmigo contigo consigo con él con ella con nosotros
(archaic connosco)
con nosotras
(archaic connosco)
con vosotros
(archaic convosco)
con vosotras
(archaic convosco)
con ellos con ellas



Spanish inflectional classes
"boy" "girl" "man" "woman"
Singular chico chica hombre mujer
Plural chicos chicas hombres mujeres




Romanian noun inflections
Definiteness Case "boy" "girl"
Singular Plural Singular Plural
Indefinite Nominative
băiat băieți fată fete
Vocative băiatule, băiete băietilor fato (fată) fetelor
Definite Nominative
băiatul băieții fata fetele
băiatului băieților fetei fetelor

Noun inflection has survived in Romanian somewhat better than elsewhere.[47]:399 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, enriched with native development and Slavic borrowings (see some examples here) and the combination of noun with a following clitic definite article produces a separate set of "definite" inflections for nouns.



Case Latin Spanish Old French[22]:100 Old Sursilvan[47]:367 Romanian[47]:402
Masculine singular Nominative bonus bueno buens buns bun
Vocative bone
Accusative bonum buen biVn
Genitive bonī
Dative bonō
Masculine plural Nominative bonī buenos buen biVni buni
Accusative bonōs buens buns
Genitive bonōrum
Dative bonīs
Feminine singular Nominative bona buena buene buna bună
Accusative bonam
Genitive bonae bune
Ablative bonā
Feminine plural Nominative bonae buenas buenes bunas bune
Accusative bonās
Genitive bonārum
Dative bonīs







  • il hotel natsionalizaw "the nationalized hotel"

Pronouns, determiners[edit]


Most Romance languages have the following sets of pronouns and determiners:

  • Personal pronouns, in three persons and two genders.
  • A two-way or three-way distinction among demonstratives. Many languages have a three-way distinction of distance (near me, near you, near him) which, though not paralleled in current English, used to be present as "this/that/yon".

Personal pronouns[edit]


Development from Latin[edit]




The same demonstrative ille is the source of the definite article in most Romance languages (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 phonological reduction. Generally, the personal pronoun is unreduced (beyond normal sound change), while the article has undergone various degrees of reduction, beginning with loss of one of the two original syllables, e.g. Spanish ella "she" < illa vs. la "the (fem.)" < -la < illa, or masculine el, developed from il- < illud.

Clitic pronouns[edit]





Familiar–formal distinction[edit]



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 was displaced 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 (as in Guatemala), displaces it entirely (as in Argentina), or is itself displaced (as in Mexico, except in Chiapas). In the Spanish of the Americas, 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 tú/vos system.



Brazilian Portuguese, however, has diverged from this system, 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 (and feminine a senhora) 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, and the whole pronoun system has been radically realigned. However that is the case only in the spoken language of central and northern Brazil, with the northeastern and southern areas of the country still largely preserving the second-person verb form and the "tu" and "você" distinction.





  • I want milk.
  • Men arrived today.

But neither of these:

  • Milk is good for you.
  • I hate men.



Due to pervasive sound changes in French, most nouns are pronounced identically in the singular and plural, and there is often heavy homophony between nouns and identically pronounced words of other classes. For example, all of the following are pronounced /sɛ̃/: 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⟩ /s/ and ⟨c⟩ /t͡ʃ/ are clearly distinct from each other.

Latin, at least originally, had a three-way distinction among demonstrative pronouns distinguished by distal value: hic 'this', iste 'that (near you)', ille 'that (over there)', similar to the distinction that used to exist in English 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!)" (still vigorous in Italy as Ecco! 'Behold!'), possibly with influence from atque "and".[51]

Reinforced demonstratives such as accu-ille arose as 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; cf. Italian ciò 'that') and the determiner ce/cet "this/that" (earlier cest, from ecce-istum).




Verbal morphology[edit]

Correspondence between Latin and Romance tenses
Latin Portuguese Spanish Catalan Occitan French Rhaeto-Romance Italian Romanian Sardinian
Present indicative Present indicative
Present subjunctive Present subjunctive
Imperfect indicative Imperfect indicative
Imperfect subjunctive Personal infinitive Imperfect subjunctive /
Personal infinitive
in Old French
Literary Remote Past
(Regional Standard Italian in North); Preterite/Perfect
(Regional Standard Italian in South)
only traces in modern lang
Perfect subjunctive
in Old Occitan[53]
Second preterite
in very early Old French
(Sequence of Saint Eulalia)[54]
Pluperfect subjunctive Imperfect subjunctive Pluperfect indicative
Future perfect Future subjunctive
(very much in use)
Future subjunctive
possible traces of
future subjunctive
in Old Occitan[55]
possible traces of
future subjunctive
in Old Italian
Conditional in Old Romanian (until 17th cent.)
New future infinitive+habeo voleo+infinitive habeo+infinitive
(split apart from
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 both (Tuscan Standard Italian);[52]
present perfect only
(Regional Standard Italian in North);
preference for preterite
(Regional Standard Italian in South)
present perfect only present perfect only

Verbs have many conjugations, including in most languages:

  • An imperative mood, for direct commands.


Infinitive Indicative Subjunctive Imperative
Present Preterite Imperfect Present Present
Latin dīcere dīcit dīxit dicēbat dīcat/dīcet dīc
Aragonese dicir diz dició deciba/diciba diga diz
Asturian dicir diz dixo dicía diga di
Corsican dice/dici disse/dissi dicia dica/dichi
Emilian dîr dîs l'à détt / dgé dgeva dégga
Franco-Provençal dire di djéve dijisse/dzéze dète
French dire1 dit dit disait dise dis
Galician dicir di dixo dicía diga di
Italian di(ce)re dice disse diceva dica
Leonese dicire diz dixu dicía diga di
Lombard dis ha dii diseva disa
Mirandese dir diś à dit dgiva diga
Neapolitan dicere dice dicette diceva diche dije
Occitan díser/dire ditz diguèt disiá diga diga
Picard dire dit disoait diche
Piedmontese dis dìsser2, l'ha dit disìa disa dis
Portuguese dizer diz disse dizia diga diz3
Romansh dir di ha ditg discheva5 dia di
Sicilian dìciri dici dissi dicìa dica6 dici
Spanish decir dice dijo decía diga di
Venetian dir dise disea diga dì/disi
Walloon dire dit a dit dijheut dixhe di

2Until the eighteenth century.
3With the disused variant dize.
4long infinitive
5In modern times, scheva.
6Sicilian now uses imperfect subjunctive dicissi in place of present subjunctive.




    • present perfect only: Romansh



  • Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify.



Romance languages have borrowed heavily, though mostly from other Romance languages. However, some, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and French, have borrowed heavily from other language groups. Vulgar Latin borrowed first from indigenous languages of the Roman empire, and during the Germanic folk movements, from Germanic languages, especially Gothic; for Eastern Romance languages, during Bulgarian Empires, from Slavic languages, especially Bulgarian. Notable examples are *blancus "white", replacing native albus (but Romansh alv, Dalmatian jualb, Romanian alb); *guerra "war", replacing native bellum; and the words for the cardinal directions, where cognates of English "north", "south", "east" and "west" replaced the native words septentriō, merīdiēs (also "noon; midday nap"; cf. Romanian meriză), oriens, and occidens. (See History of French – The Franks.) Some Celtic words were incorporated into the core vocabulary, partly for words with no Latin equivalent (betulla "birch", camisia "shirt", cerevisia "beer"), but in some cases replacing Latin vocabulary (gladius "sword", replacing ensis; cambiāre "to exchange", replacing mūtāre except in Romanian and Portuguese; carrus "cart", replacing currus; pettia "piece", largely displacing pars (later resurrected) and eliminating frustum). Many Greek loans also entered the lexicon, e.g. spatha "sword" (Greek: σπάθη spáthē,[56][57] replacing gladius which shifted to "iris", cf. French épée, Spanish espada, Italian spada and Romanian spată); cara "face" (Greek: κάρα kára,[58] partly replacing faciēs); colpe "blow" (Greek: κόλαφος kólaphos,[59][60] replacing ictus, cf. Spanish golpe, French coup); cata "each" (Greek: κατά katá,[61] replacing quisque); common suffixes *-ijāre/-izāre (Greek: -ίζειν -izein,[62] French oyer/-iser, Spanish -ear/-izar, Italian -eggiare/-izzare, etc.), -ista (Greek: -ιστής -istes[63]).[64]

Lexical innovation[edit]

Many basic nouns and verbs, especially those that were short or had irregular morphology, were replaced by longer derived forms with regular morphology. Nouns, and sometimes adjectives, were often replaced by diminutives, e.g. auris "ear" > auricula (orig. "outer ear") > oricla (Sardinian origra, Italian orecchia/o, Portuguese orelha, etc.); avis "bird" > avicellus (orig. "chick, nestling") > aucellu (Occitan aucèl, Friulan ucel, French oiseau, etc.); caput "head" > capitium (Portuguese cabeça, Spanish cabeza, French chevet "headboard"; but reflexes of caput were retained also, sometimes without change of meaning, as in Italian capo "head", alongside testa); vetus "old" > vetulus > veclus (Dalmatian vieklo, Italian vecchio, Portuguese velho, etc.). Sometimes augmentative constructions were used instead: piscis "fish" > Old French peis > peisson (orig. "big fish") > French poisson. Verbs were often replaced by frequentative constructions: canere "to sing" > cantāre; iacere "to throw" > iactāre > *iectāre (Italian gettare, Portuguese jeitar, Spanish echar, etc.); iuvāre > adiūtāre (Italian aiutare, Spanish ayudar, French aider, etc., meaning "help", alongside e.g. iuvāre > Italian giovare "to be of use"); vēnārī "hunt" (Romanian "vâna", Aromanian "avin, avinari") > replaced by *captiāre "to hunt", frequentative of capere "to seize" (Italian cacciare, Portuguese caçar, Romansh catschar, French chasser, etc.).

Many Classical Latin words became archaic or poetic and were replaced by more colloquial terms: equus "horse" > caballus (orig. "nag") (but equa "mare" remains, cf. Spanish yegua, Portuguese égua, Sardinian ebba, Romanian iapă); domus "house" > casa (orig. "hut"); ignis "fire" > focus (orig. "hearth"); strāta "street" > rūga (orig. "furrow") or callis (orig. "footpath") (but strāta is continued in Italian strada, Romanian stradă and secondarily in e.g. Spanish/Portuguese estrada "causeway, paved road"). In some cases, terms from common occupations became generalized: invenīre "to find" replaced by Ibero-Romance afflāre (orig. "to sniff out", in hunting, cf. Spanish hallar, Portuguese achar, Romanian afla(to find out)); advenīre "to arrive" gave way to Ibero-Romance plicāre (orig. "to fold (sails; tents)", cf. Spanish llegar, Portuguese chegar; Romanian pleca), elsewhere arripāre (orig. "to harbor at a riverbank", cf. Italian arrivare, French arriver) (advenīre is continued with the meaning "to achieve, manage to do" as in Middle French aveindre, or "to happen" in Italian avvenire) . The same thing sometimes happened to religious terms, due to the pervasive influence of Christianity: loquī "to speak" succumbed to parabolāre (orig. "to tell parables", cf. Occitan parlar, French parler, Italian parlare ) or fabulārī (orig. "to tell stories", cf. Spanish hablar, Portuguese falar), based on Jesus' way of speaking in parables.

Many prepositions were used as verbal particles to make new roots and verb stems, e.g. Italian estrarre, Aromanian astragu, astradziri "to extract" from Latin ex- "out of" and trahere "to pull" (Italian trarre "draw, pull"), or to augment already existing words, e.g. French coudre, Italian cucire, Portuguese coser "to sew", from cōnsuere "to sew up", from suere "to sew", with total loss of the bare stem. Many prepositions and commonly became compounded, e.g. de ex > French dès "as of", ab ante > Italian avanti "forward". Some words derived from phrases, e.g. Portuguese agora, Spanish ahora "now" < hāc hōrā "at this hour"; French avec "with" (prep.) < Old French avuec (adv.) < apud hoc ("near that"); Spanish tamaño, Portuguese tamanho "size" < tam magnum "so big"; Italian codesto "this, that" (near you) < Old Italian cotevesto < eccum tibi istum approx. "here's that thing of yours"; Portuguese você "you"[65] < vosmecê < vossemecê < Galician-Portuguese vossa mercee "your mercy".[66]

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 and Romania), or as secondary terms, sometimes differing in meaning. For example, Latin caseum "cheese" in the more outer places (Portuguese queijo, Spanish queso, Romansh caschiel, Sardinian càsu, Romanian caş), but in the central areas has been replaced by formāticum, originally "moulded (cheese)" (French fromage, Occitan/Catalan formatge, Italian formaggio, with, however, cacio also available; 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, Catalan menjar, but Spanish/Portuguese noun manjar "food" or "uplifting meal"). In some cases, one language happens to preserve a word displaced elsewhere, e.g. Italian ogni "each, every" < omnes, displaced elsewhere by tōtum, originally "whole" or by a reflex of Greek κατά (e.g. Italian ognuno, Catalan tothom "everyone"; Italian ogni giorno, Spanish cada día "every day"); Friulan vaî "to cry" < flere "to weep"; Vegliote otijemna "fishing pole" < antenna "yardarm"; Aromanian "sprunã" (warm ashes) < pruna (burning coal). Sardinian even preserves some words that were already archaic in Classical Latin, e.g. àchina "grape" < acinam, also found in Sicilian ràcina.



Latin Romance Inherited Latinism
fabrica Spanish fragua "forge" fábrica "factory"
lēgālis Spanish leal "loyal" legal "legal"

Sometimes triplets arise: Latin articulus "joint" > Portuguese artículo "joint, knuckle" (learned), artigo "article" (semi-learned), artelho "ankle" (inherited; archaic and dialectal). In many cases, the learned word simply displaced the original popular word: e.g. Spanish crudo "crude, raw" (Old Spanish cruo); French légume "vegetable" (Old French leüm); Portuguese flor "flower" (Galician-Portuguese chor). The learned loan always sounds (and, in writing, looks) more like the original than the inherited word does, because regular sound change has been bypassed; likewise, the learned word usually has a meaning closer to that of the original. In French, the stress of the modern form of the learned loan may be on the "wrong" syllable vis-à-vis Latin, whereas the stress of the inherited word always corresponds to the Latin stress: e.g. Latin vipera (stress on /i/) vs. French vipère, learned loan, and guivre/vouivre, inherited.



Sound changes[edit]


Significant sound changes affected the consonants of the Romance languages.




Final -m was dropped in Vulgar Latin. Even in Classical Latin, final -am, -em, -um (inflectional suffixes of the accusative case) were often elided in poetic meter, suggesting the m was weakly pronounced, probably marking the nasalisation of the vowel before it. This nasal vowel lost its nasalization in the Romance languages except in monosyllables, where it became /n/ e.g. Spanish quien < quem "whom", French rien "anything" < rem "thing"; note especially French and Catalan mon < meum "my (" pronounced as one syllable (/meu̯m/ > */meu̯n/, /mun/) but Spanish mío and Portuguese and Catalan meu < meum pronounced as two (/ˈ > */ˈme.o/).


  • Final -t in third-person singular verb forms, and -nt (later reduced in many languages to -n) in third-person plural verb forms.
  • Final -s (including -x) in a large number of morphological endings (verb endings -ās/-ēs/-īs/-is, -mus, -tis; nominative singular -us/-is; plural -ās/-ōs/-ēs) and certain other words (trēs "three", sex "six", crās "tomorrow", etc.).
  • Final -n in some monosyllables (from earlier -m).
  • Final -r, -d in some prepositions (e.g. ad, per), which were clitics that attached phonologically to the following word.
  • Very occasionally, final -c, e.g. Occitan oc "yes" < hoc, Old French avuec "with" < apud hoc (although these instances were possibly protected by a final epenthetic vowel at one point).

Final -t was eventually dropped in many languages, although this often occurred several centuries after the Vulgar Latin period. For example, the reflex of -t was dropped in Old French and Old Spanish only around 1100. In Old French, this occurred only when a vowel still preceded the t (generally /ə/ < Latin a). Hence amat "he loves" > Old French aime but venit "he comes" > Old French vient: the /t/ was never dropped and survives into Modern French in liaison, e.g. vient-il? "is he coming?" /vjɛ̃ti(l)/ (the corresponding /t/ in aime-t-il? is analogical, not inherited). Old French also kept the third-person plural ending -nt intact.

In Italo-Romance and the Eastern Romance languages, eventually all final consonants were either dropped or protected by an epenthetic vowel, except in clitic forms (e.g. prepositions con, per). Modern Standard Italian still has almost no consonant-final words, although Romanian has resurfaced them through later loss of final /u/ and /i/. For example, amās "you love" > ame > Italian ami; amant "they love" > *aman > Ital. amano. On the evidence of "sloppily written" Lombardic language documents, however, the loss of final /s/ in Italy did not occur until the 7th or 8th century, after the Vulgar Latin period, and the presence of many former final consonants is betrayed by the syntactic gemination (raddoppiamento sintattico) that they trigger. It is also thought that after a long vowel /s/ became /j/ rather than simply disappearing: nōs > noi "we", se(d)ēs > sei "you are", crās > crai "tomorrow" (southern Italian). In unstressed syllables, the resulting diphthongs were simplified: canēs > /ˈkanej/ > cani "dogs"; amīcās > /aˈmikaj/ > amiche /aˈmike/ "(female) friends", where nominative amīcae should produce **amice rather than amiche (note masculine amīcī > amici not **amichi).

Central Western Romance languages eventually regained a large number of final consonants through the general loss of final /e/ and /o/, e.g. Catalan llet "milk" < lactem, foc "fire" < focum, peix "fish" < piscem. In French, most of these secondary final consonants (as well as primary ones) were lost before around 1700, but tertiary final consonants later arose through the loss of /ə/ < -a. Hence masculine frīgidum "cold" > Old French freit /frwεt/ > froid /fʁwa/, feminine frigidam > Old French freide /frwεdə/ > froide /fʁwad/.



The following historical stages occurred:

Stage Environment Consonants affected Result Languages affected
4 before /e/ all except Sardinian and Dalmatian



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

  • Original /j/ has the same outcome as palatalized /ɡ/ everywhere.
  • Italian inconsistently has /ddz~ddʒ/ from palatalized /d/, and /ddʒ/ from palatalized /ɡ/.
  • Most other languages have the same results for palatalized /d/ and /ɡ/: consistent /dʒ/ initially, but either /j/ or /dʒ/ medially (depending on language and exact context). But Spanish has /j/ (phonetically [ɟ͡ʝ]) initially except before /o/, /u/; nearby Gascon is similar.

This suggests that palatalized /d/ > /dʲ/ > either /j/ or /dz/ depending on location, while palatalized /ɡ/ > /j/; after this, /j/ > /(d)dʒ/ in most areas, but Spanish and Gascon (originating from isolated districts behind the western Pyrenees) were relic areas unaffected by this change.

In French, the outcomes of /k, ɡ/ palatalized by /e, i, j/ and by /a, au/ were different: centum "hundred" > cent /sɑ̃/ but cantum "song" > chant /ʃɑ̃/. French also underwent palatalization of labials before /j/: Vulgar Latin /pj, bj~vj, mj/ > Old French /tʃ, dʒ, ndʒ/ (sēpia "cuttlefish" > seiche, rubeus "red" > rouge, sīmia "monkey" > singe).


The effect of palatalization is indicated in the writing systems of almost all Romance languages, where the letters have the "hard" pronunciation [k, ɡ] in most situations, but a "soft" pronunciation (e.g. French/Portuguese [s, ʒ], Italian/Romanian [tʃ, dʒ]) before ⟨e, i, y⟩. (This orthographic trait has passed into Modern English through Norman French-speaking scribes writing Middle English; this replaced the earlier system of Old English, which had developed its own hard-soft distinction with the soft ⟨c, g⟩ representing [tʃ, j~dʒ].) This has the effect of keeping the modern spelling similar to the original Latin spelling, but complicates the relationship between sound and letter. In particular, the hard sounds must be written differently before ⟨e, i, y⟩ (e.g. Italian ⟨ch, gh⟩, Portuguese ⟨qu, gu⟩), and likewise for the soft sounds when not before these letters (e.g. Italian ⟨ci, gi⟩, Portuguese ⟨ç, j⟩). Furthermore, in Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese, the use of digraphs containing ⟨u⟩ to signal the hard pronunciation before ⟨e, i, y⟩ means that a different spelling is also needed to signal the sounds /kw, ɡw/ before these vowels (Spanish ⟨cu, gü⟩, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese ⟨qü, gü⟩).[67] This produces a number of orthographic alternations in verbs whose pronunciation is entirely regular. The following are examples of corresponding first-person plural indicative and subjunctive in a number of regular Portuguese verbs: marcamos, marquemos "we mark"; caçamos, cacemos "we hunt"; chegamos, cheguemos "we arrive"; averiguamos, averigüemos "we verify"; adequamos, adeqüemos "we adapt"; oferecemos, ofereçamos "we offer"; dirigimos, dirijamos "we drive" erguemos, ergamos "we raise"; delinquimos, delincamos "we commit a crime". In the case of Italian, the convention of digraphs <ch> and <gh> to represent /k/ and /g/ before written <e, i> results in similar orthographic alternations, such as dimentico 'I forget', dimentichi 'you forget', baco 'worm', bachi 'worms' with [k] or pago 'I pay', paghi 'you pay' and lago 'lake', laghi 'lakes' with [g]. The use in Italian of <ci> and <gi> to represent /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ before vowels written <a,o,u> neatly distinguishes dico 'I say' with /k/ from dici 'you say' with /tʃ/ or ghiro 'dormouse' /g/ and giro 'turn, revolution' /dʒ/, but with orthographic <ci> and <gi> also representing the sequence of /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ and the actual vowel /i/ (/ditʃi/ dici, /dʒiro/ giro), and no generally observed convention of indicating stress position, the status of i when followed by another vowel in spelling can be unrecognizable. For example, the written forms offer no indication that <cia> in camicia 'shirt' represents a single unstressed syllable /tʃa/ with no /i/ at any level (/kaˈmitʃa/ → [kaˈmiːtʃa] ~ [kaˈmiːʃa]), but that underlying the same spelling <cia> in farmacia 'pharmacy' is a bisyllabic sequence consisting of the stressed syllable /tʃi/ and syllabic /a/ (/farmaˈtʃia/ → [farmaˈtʃiːa] ~ [farmaˈʃiːa]).


Stop consonants shifted by lenition in Vulgar Latin in some areas.

The voiced labial consonants /b/ and /w/ (represented by ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩, respectively) both developed a fricative [β] as an intervocalic allophone.[68] This is clear from the orthography; in medieval times, the spelling of a consonantal ⟨v⟩ is often used for what had been a ⟨b⟩ in Classical Latin, or the two spellings were used interchangeably. In many Romance languages (Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.), this fricative later developed into a /v/; but in others (Spanish, Galician, some Catalan and Occitan dialects, etc.) reflexes of /b/ and /w/ simply merged into a single phoneme.


Single voiceless plosives became voiced: -p-, -t-, -c- > -b-, -d-, -g-. Subsequently, in some languages they were further weakened, either becoming fricatives or approximants, [β̞], [ð̞], [ɣ˕] (as in Spanish) or disappearing entirely (as /t/ and /k/, but not /p/, in French). The following example shows progressive weakening of original /t/: e.g. vītam > Italian vita [ˈvita], Portuguese vida [ˈvidɐ] (European Portuguese [ˈviðɐ]), Spanish vida [ˈbiða] (Southern Peninsular Spanish [ˈbia]), and French vie [vi]. Some scholars once speculated that these sound changes may be due in part to the influence of Continental Celtic languages,[citation needed] but scholarship of the past few decades challenges that hypothesis.


Consonant length is no longer phonemically distinctive in most Romance languages. However some languages of Italy (Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, and numerous other varieties of central and southern Italy) do have long consonants like /ɡɡ/, /dd/, /bb/, /kk/, /tt/, /pp/, /ll/, /mm/, /nn/, /ss/, /rr/, etc., where the doubling indicates either actual length or, in the case of plosives and affricates, a short hold before the consonant is released, in many cases with distinctive lexical value: e.g. note /ˈnɔ.te/ (notes) vs. notte /ˈnɔt.te/ (night), cade /ˈ (s/he, it falls) vs. cadde /ˈ (s/he, it fell), caro /ˈ (dear, expensive) vs. carro /ˈ (cart). They may even occur at the beginning of words in Romanesco, Neapolitan, Sicilian and other southern varieties, and are occasionally indicated in writing, e.g. Sicilian cchiù (more), and ccà (here). In general, the consonants /b/, /ts/, and /dz/ are long at the start of a word, while the archiphoneme |R|[dubious ] is realised as a trill /r/ in the same position. In much of central and southern Italy, the affricates /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ weaken synchronically to fricative [ʃ] and [ʒ] between vowels, while their geminate congeners do not, e.g. cacio /ˈka.t͡ʃo/ → [ˈkaːʃo] (cheese) vs. caccio /ˈkat.t͡ʃo/ → [ˈkat.t͡ʃo] (I chase).



In Western Romance, an epenthetic or prosthetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with /s/ and another consonant: spatha "sword" > Spanish/Portuguese espada, Catalan espasa, Old French espeḍe > modern épée; Stephanum "Stephen" > Spanish Esteban, Catalan Esteve, Portuguese Estêvão, Old French Estievne > modern Étienne; status "state" > Spanish/Portuguese estado, Catalan estat, Old French estat > modern état; spiritus "spirit" > Spanish espíritu, Portuguese espírito, Catalan esperit, French esprit. Epenthetic /e/ in Western Romance languages may have been influenced by Continental Celtic languages,[citation needed] although the phenomenon exists or existed in some areas where Celtic was never present. While Western Romance words undergo word-initial epenthesis (prothesis), cognates in Italian do not: spatha > spada, Stephanum > Stefano, status > stato, spiritus > spirito. In Italian, syllabification rules were preserved instead by vowel-final articles, thus feminine spada as la spada, but instead of rendering the masculine *il spaghetto, lo spaghetto came to be the norm. Though receding at present, Italian once had an epenthetic /i/ if a consonant preceded such clusters, so that 'in Switzerland' was in [i]Svizzera. Some speakers still use the prothetic [i] productively, and it is fossilized in a few set phrases such as per iscritto 'in writing' (although in this case its survival may be due partly to the influence of the separate word iscritto < Latin īnscrīptus).

Stressed vowels[edit]

Loss of vowel length, reorientation[edit]

Evolution of the stressed vowels in early Romance
Classical Proto-
Sardinian Sicilian
Acad.1 Roman IPA Acad.1 IPA IPA
ȳ long y /yː/
y (y̆) short y /y/
œ oe /oj/ > /eː/
æ ae /aj/ > [ɛː]
a (ă) short a /a/
(a few words)
au /aw/ > /oː/
(most words)
au /aw/ au /aw/
1 Traditional academic transcription in Latin and Romance studies, respectively.


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.[69] So, for example ē was pronounced close-mid /eː/ while ĕ was pronounced open-mid /ɛ/, and ī was pronounced close /iː/ while ĭ was pronounced near-close /ɪ/.



  • The simplest outcome was in Sardinian,[70] where the former long and short vowels in Latin simply coalesced, e.g. /ĕ ē/ > /e/, /ĭ ī/ > /i/: This produced a simple five-vowel system /a e i o u/.



Latin diphthongs[edit]


ae became /ɛː/ by the 1st century a.d. at the latest. Although this sound was still distinct from all existing vowels, the neutralization of Latin vowel length eventually caused its merger with /ɛ/ < short e: e.g. caelum "sky" > French ciel, Spanish/Italian cielo, Portuguese céu /sɛw/, with the same vowel as in mele "honey" > French/Spanish miel, Italian miele, Portuguese mel /mɛl/. Some words show an early merger of ae with /eː/, as in praeda "booty" > *prēda /preːda/ > French proie (vs. expected **priée), Italian preda (not **prieda) "prey"; or faenum "hay" > *fēnum [feːnũ] > Spanish heno, French foin (but Italian fieno /fjɛno/).

oe generally merged with /eː/: poenam "punishment" > Romance */pena/ > Spanish/Italian pena, French peine; foedus "ugly" > Romance */fedo/ > Spanish feo, Portuguese feio. There are relatively few such outcomes, since oe was rare in Classical Latin (most original instances had become Classical ū, as in Old Latin oinos "one" > Classical ūnus[71]) and so oe was mostly limited to Greek loanwords, which were typically learned (high-register) terms.

au merged with ō /oː/ in the popular speech of Rome already by the 1st century b.c. A number of authors remarked on this explicitly, e.g. Cicero's taunt that the populist politician Publius Clodius Pulcher had changed his name from Claudius to ingratiate himself with the masses. This change never penetrated far from Rome, however, and the pronunciation /au/ was maintained for centuries in the vast majority of Latin-speaking areas, although it eventually developed into some variety of o in many languages. For example, Italian and French have /ɔ/ as the usual reflex, but this post-dates diphthongization of /ɔ/ and the French-specific palatalization /ka/ > /tʃa/ (hence causa > French chose, Italian cosa /kɔza/ not **cuosa). Spanish has /o/, but Portuguese spelling maintains ⟨ou⟩, which has developed to /o/ (and still remains as /ou/ in some dialects, and /oi/ in others). Occitan, Romanian, southern Italian languages, and many other minority Romance languages still have /au/. A few common words, however, show an early merger with ō /oː/, evidently reflecting a generalization of the popular Roman pronunciation: e.g. French queue, Italian coda /koda/, Occitan co(d)a, Romanian coadă (all meaning "tail") must all derive from cōda rather than Classical cauda (but notice Portuguese cauda).[72] Similarly, Portuguese orelha, French oreille, Romanian ureche, and Sardinian olícra, orícla "ear" must derive from ōric(u)la rather than Classical auris (Occitan aurelha was probably influenced by the unrelated ausir < audīre "to hear"), and the form oricla is in fact reflected in the Appendix Probi.

Further developments[edit]



Some examples:

  • Calvallo in Basilicata, southern Italy, is similar, but the low-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ are diphthongized to /je wo/ rather than raised:[74] /ˈmette/ "he puts" vs. /ˈmitti/ "you put", but /ˈpɛnʒo/ "I think" vs. /ˈpjenʒi/ "you think".
  • Some of the Astur-Leonese languages in northern Spain have the same distinction between final /o/ and /u/[75] as in the Central-Southern Italian languages,[76] with /u/ triggering metaphony.[77] The plural of masculine nouns in these dialects ends in -os, which does not trigger metaphony, unlike in the singular (vs. Italian plural -i, which does trigger metaphony).
  • Raising of /ɔ/ to /o/ occurs sporadically in Portuguese in the masculine singular, e.g. porco /ˈporku/ "pig" vs. porcos /ˈpɔrkus/ "pig". It is thought that Galician-Portuguese at one point had singular /u/ vs. plural /os/, exactly as in modern Astur-Leonese.[76]

A number of languages diphthongized some of the free vowels, especially the open-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/:

  • Spanish consistently diphthongized all open-mid vowels /ɛ ɔ/ > /je we/ except for before certain palatal consonants (which raised the vowels to close-mid before diphthongization took place).
  • Italian diphthongized /ɛ/ > /jɛ/ and /ɔ/ > /wɔ/ in open syllables (in the situations where vowels were lengthened in Proto-Romance), the most salient exception being /ˈbɛne/ bene 'well', perhaps due to the high frequency of apocopated ben (e.g. ben difficile 'quite difficult', ben fatto 'well made' etc.).

These diphthongizations had the effect of reducing or eliminating the distinctions between open-mid and close-mid vowels in many languages. In Spanish and Romanian, all open-mid vowels were diphthongized, and the distinction disappeared entirely. Portuguese is the most conservative in this respect, keeping the seven-vowel system more or less unchanged (but with changes in particular circumstances, e.g. due to metaphony). Other than before palatalized consonants, Catalan keeps /ɔ o/ intact, but /ɛ e/ split in a complex fashion into /ɛ e ə/ and then coalesced again in the standard dialect (Eastern Catalan) in such a way that most original /ɛ e/ have reversed their quality to become /e ɛ/.

In French and Italian, the distinction between open-mid and close-mid vowels occurred only in closed syllables. Standard Italian more or less maintains this. In French, /e/ and /ɛ/ merged by the twelfth century or so, and the distinction between /ɔ/ and /o/ was eliminated without merging by the sound changes /u/ > /y/, /o/ > /u/. Generally this led to a situation where both [e,o] and [ɛ,ɔ] occur allophonically, with the close-mid vowels in open syllables and the open-mid vowels in closed syllables. This is still the situation in modern Spanish, for example.[citation needed] In French, however, both [e/ɛ] and [o/ɔ] were partly rephonemicized: Both /e/ and /ɛ/ occur in open syllables as a result of /aj/ > /ɛ/, and both /o/ and /ɔ/ occur in closed syllables as a result of /al/ > /au/ > /o/.





Front-rounded vowels[edit]


Unstressed vowels[edit]

Evolution of unstressed vowels in early Italo-Western Romance
Latin Proto-
Stressed Non-final
Original Later
IPA Acad.1 IPA
ē,oe /e/ /e/
i,y /ɪ/
ō,(au) /o/ /o/
u /ʊ/ /u/
ū /u/ u /u/
(most words)
/aw/ au /aw/ N/A
1 Traditional academic transcription in Romance studies.




Examples of evolution of final unstressed vowels:
From least- to most-changed languages
English Latin Proto-Italo-Western1 Conservative
Central Italian1
Italian Spanish Catalan Old French
one (fem.) ūnam ˈuna una una una una une
door portam ˈpɔrta pɔrta porta puerta porta porte
seven septem ˈsɛtte sɛtte sette siete set set
sea mare ˈmare mare mare mar mar mer
peace pācem ˈpatʃe pace pace paz pau paiz
part partem ˈparte parte parte parte part part
mother mātrem ˈmatre matre madre madre mare meḍre
twenty vīgintī veˈenti vinti venti veinte vint vint
four quattuor ˈkwattro quattro quattro cuatro quatre quatre
eight octō ˈɔkto ɔtto otto ocho vuit huit
when quandō ˈkwando quando quando cuando quan quant
fourth quartum ˈkwartu quartu quarto cuarto quart quart
one (masc.) ūnum ˈunu unu uno uno un un
port portum ˈpɔrtu portu porto puerto port port



Various later changes happened in individual languages, e.g.:

  • In Portuguese, final unstressed /o/ and /u/ were apparently preserved intact for a while, since final unstressed /u/, but not /o/ or /os/, triggered metaphony (see above). Final-syllable unstressed /o/ was raised in preliterary times to /u/, but always still written ⟨o⟩. At some point (perhaps in late Galician-Portuguese), final-syllable unstressed /e/ was raised to /i/ (but still written ⟨e⟩); this remains in Brazilian Portuguese, but has developed to /ɨ/ in European Portuguese.

Intertonic vowels[edit]



  • metipsissimus[79] > medipsimus /medíssimos/ ~ /medéssimos/ "self"[80] > Italian medésimo vs. Venetian medemo, Lombard medemm, Old Spanish meísmo, meesmo (> modern mismo), Galician-Portuguese meesmo (> modern mesmo), Old French meḍisme (> later meïsme > MF mesme > modern même)[81]


Writing systems[edit]



Spelling of results of palatalization and related sounds
Sound Spanish Portuguese French Italian Romanian
/kw/, not + ⟨e, i, y⟩ ⟨cu⟩ ⟨qu⟩ ⟨cu⟩
/k/ + ⟨e, i⟩ (inherited) ⟨qu⟩ ⟨ch⟩
/kw/ + ⟨e, i⟩ (learned) ⟨cu⟩ ⟨qu⟩[82] ⟨cu⟩
palatalized /k, g/
palatalized /k, g/
⟨j⟩ ⟨g(e)⟩ ⟨gi⟩
/gw/ + ⟨e, i⟩ (learned) ⟨gü⟩ ⟨gu⟩[83]
(former) /ʎ/ ⟨ll⟩ ⟨lh⟩ ⟨il(l)⟩ ⟨gli⟩
/ɲ/ ⟨ñ⟩ ⟨nh⟩ ⟨gn⟩



The spelling rules of most Romance languages are fairly simple, and consistent within any language. Since the spelling systems are based on phonemic structures rather than phonetics, however, the actual pronunciation of what is represented in standard orthography can be subject to considerable regional variation, as well as to allophonic differentiation by position in the word or utterance. Among the letters representing the most conspicuous phonological variations, between Romance languages or with respect to Latin, are the following:

B, V: Merged in Spanish and most dialects of Catalan, where both letters represent a single phoneme pronounced as either [b] or [β] depending on position, with no differentiation between B and V.
G: Generally a "hard" [ɡ], but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before e, i, or y. In some languages, like Spanish, the hard g, phonemically /g/, is pronounced as a fricative [ɣ] after vowels. In Romansch, the soft g is a voiced palatal plosive [ɟ] or a voiced alveolo-palatal affricate [dʑ].
J: Represents the fricative [ʒ] in most languages, or the palatal approximant [j] in Romansh and in several of the languages of Italy. Italian does not use this letter in native words.
Q: As in Latin, its phonetic value is that of a hard c, i.e. [k], 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 [s], but voiced [z] between vowels in some languages. In Spanish, Romanian, Galician and several varieties of Italian, however, it is always pronounced voiceless between vowels. If the phoneme /s/ is represented by the letter S, predictable assimilations are normally not shown (e.g. Italian /slitta/ 'sled', spelled slitta but pronounced [zlitːa], never with [s]). Also at the end of syllables it may represent special allophonic pronunciations. In Romansh, it also stands for a voiceless or voiced fricative, [ʃ] or [ʒ], before certain consonants.
Y: This letter is not used in most languages, with the prominent exceptions of French and Spanish, where it represents [j] before vowels (or various similar fricatives such as the palatal fricative [ʝ], in Spanish), and the vowel [i] or semivowel [j] elsewhere.
Z: In most languages it represents the sound [z]. However, in Italian it denotes the affricates [dz] and [ts] (which are two separate phonemes, but rarely contrast; among the few examples of minimal pairs are razza "ray" with [ddz], razza "race" with [tts] (note that both are phonetically long between vowels); in Romansh the voiceless affricate [ts]; and in Galician and Spanish it denotes either the voiceless dental fricative [θ] or [s].

Otherwise, letters that are not combined as digraphs generally represent the same phonemes as suggested by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), whose design was, in fact, greatly influenced by Romance spelling systems.

Digraphs and trigraphs[edit]


CI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican and Romanian to represent /tʃ/ before A, O, or U.
CH: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent /k/ before E or I (including yod /j/); /tʃ/ in Occitan, Spanish, Astur-leonese and Galician; [c] or [tɕ] in Romansh before A, O or U; and /ʃ/ in most other languages. In Catalan it is used in some old spelling conventions for /k/.
DJ: used in Walloon and Catalan for /dʒ/.
GH: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent /ɡ/ before E or I (including yod /j/), and in Galician for the voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ħ/ (not standard sound).
GLI: used in Italian and Corsican for /ʎʎ/ and Romansh for /ʎ/.
GN: used in French, some Romance languages in Italy, Corsican and Romansh for /ɲ/, as in champignon; in Italian to represent /ɲɲ/, as in "ogni" or "lo gnocco".
GU: used before E or I to represent /ɡ/ or /ɣ/ in all Romance languages except Italian, Romance languages in Italy, Corsican, Romansh, and Romanian, which use GH instead.
LH: used in Portuguese and Occitan /ʎ/.
LL: used in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Astur-leonese, Norman and Dgèrnésiais, originally for /ʎ/ which has merged in some cases with /j/. Represents /l/ in French unless it follows I (i) when it represents /j/ (or /ʎ/ in some dialects). As in Italian, it is used in Occitan for a long /ll/.
L·L: used in Catalan for a geminate consonant /ɫɫ/.
NN: used in Leonese for /ɲ/, in Italian for geminate /nn/.
NY: used in Catalan for /ɲ/.
QU: represents /kw/ in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, and Romansh; /k/ in French, Astur-leonese (normally before e or i); /k/ (before e or i) or /kw/ (normally before a or o) in Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese; /k/ in Spanish (always before e or i).
SC: used before E or I in Italian, Romance languages in Italy as /ʃʃ/, in European Portuguese as /ʃˈs/ and in French, Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan and Latin American Spanish as /s/ in words of certain etymology (notice this would represent /θ/ in standard peninsular Spanish)
SCH: used in Romansh for [ʃ] or [ʒ], in Italian for /sk/ before "E"or "I", including yod /j/.
SCI: used in Italian, Romance languages in Italy, and Corsican to represent /ʃ/ or /ʃʃ/ before A, O, or U.
SH: used in Aranese Occitan for /ʃ/.
SS: used in French, Portuguese, Piedmontese, Romansh, Occitan, and Catalan for /s/ between vowels, in Italian, Romance languages of Italy, and Corsican for long /ss/.
TS: used in Catalan for /ts/.
TSCH: used in Romansh for [tʃ].
TZ: used in Catalan for /dz/.


Double consonants[edit]

Gemination, in the languages where it occurs, is usually indicated by doubling the consonant, except when it does not contrast phonemically with the corresponding short consonant, in which case gemination is not indicated. In Jèrriais, long consonants are marked with an apostrophe: s's is a long /zz/, ss's is a long /ss/, and t't is a long /tt/. The phonemic contrast between geminate and single consonants is widespread in Italian, and normally indicated in the traditional orthography: fatto /fatto/ 'done' vs. fato /fato/ 'fate, destiny'; cadde /kadde/ 's/he, it fell' vs. cade /kade/ 's/he, it falls'. The double consonants in French orthography, however, are merely etymological. In Catalan, the gemination of l is marked by a punt volat ("flying point"): l·l.





  • Vowel length: French uses a circumflex to indicate what had been a long vowel (although nowadays this rather indicates a difference in vowel quality, if it has any effect at all on pronunciation). This same usage is found in some minority languages.
  • Stress: the stressed vowel in a polysyllabic word may be indicated with an accent, when it cannot be predicted by rule. In Italian, Portuguese and Catalan, the choice of accent (acute, grave or circumflex) may depend on vowel quality. When no quality needs to be indicated, an acute accent is normally used (ú), but Italian and Romansh use a grave accent (ù). Portuguese puts a diacritic on all stressed monosyllables that end in a e o as es os, to distinguish them from unstressed function words: chá "tea", más "bad (fem. pl.)", "seat (of government)", "give! (imperative)", mês "month", "only", nós "we" (cf. mas "but", se "if/oneself", de "of", nos "us"). Word-final stressed vowels in polysyllables are marked by the grave accent in Italian, thus università "university/universities", virtù "virtue/virtues", resulting in occasional minimal or near-minimal pairs such as parlo "I speak" ≠ parlò "s/he spoke", capi "heads, bosses" ≠ capì "s/he understood", gravita "it, s'/he gravitates" ≠ gravità "gravity, seriousness".

Upper and lower case[edit]



Degrees of lexical similarity between the Romance languages[edit]

%[84] French Catalan Italian Portuguese Romansh Romanian Spanish Sardinian
French 85 89 75 78 75 75 80
Catalan 85 87 85 76 73 85 75
Italian 89 87 80 78 77 82 85
Portuguese 75 85 80 74 72 89 76
Romansh 78 76 78 74 72 74 74
Romanian 75 73 77 72 72 71 74
Spanish 75 85 82 89 74 71 76
Sardinian 80 75 85 76 74 74 76

Vocabulary comparison[edit]


English Latin Sardinian[85]
Romanian Sicilian[86][87][88] Corsican
Italian Venetian Emilian Lombard Piedmontese[89] Friulian[90] Romansh French Occitan[91] Catalan Aragonese[92] Spanish Asturian[93] Portuguese Galician
man homō, hominem òmine om omu omu uomo om(en)o òm(en) om(en) òm om um homme /ɔm/ òme home om(br)e hombre home homem home
woman, wife Domina, femina,mulier, mulierem muzère muiere mugghieri moglie donna, moglie mojer mujér miee/fomna fomna muîr muglier femme /fam/
OF moillier
OOc mólher (nom.) /
molhér (obj.)
dona, muller muller mujer muyer mulher muller
son fīlium fìzu fiu figghiu figliu/figliolu figlio fiol fiōl fiö/bagaj fieul fi figl, fegl fils /fis/ filh fill fillo hijo fíu filho fillo
water aquam àbba apă acqua acqua acqua acua aqua acqua/agua/ova/eiva eva aghe aua eau /o/ aiga aigua aigua, augua agua agua água auga
fire focum fócu foc focu focu fuoco fogo foeugh fögh feu fûc fieu feu /fø/ fuòc foc fuego fuego fueu fogo fogo
rain pluviam próida ploaie chiuvuta[94] pioggia pioggia pióva pioeuva piöa pieuva ploe plievgia pluie /plɥi/ pluèja pluja plebia lluvia lluvia chuva choiva
land terram tèrra ţară terra terra terra tera tera tera tèra tiere terra/tiara terre /tɛʁ/ tèrra terra tierra tierra tierra terra terra
sky caelum chélu cer celu celu cielo çiél cēl cel/sel cel cîl tschiel ciel /sjɛl/ cèl cel zielo cielo cielu céu ceo
high altum àrtu înalt autu altu alto alto élt volt/ot àut alt aut haut[95] /o/ n-aut alt alto alto altu alto alto
new novum nóbu nou novu novu nuovo nóvo noeuv nöf/noeuv neuv gnove nov neuf /nœf/ nòu nou nuebo nuevo nuevu novo novo
horse caballum càdhu cal cavaddu cavallu cavallo cavało cavàl cavâl/caàl caval ĉhaval chaval cheval
caval cavall caballo caballo caballu cavalo cabalo
dog canem cane/jagaru câine cani cane cane can can ca(n) can cjan chaun chien
can ca can can/perro can cão can
milk lactem làte lapte latti latte latte late latt lacc/lat làit lat latg lait /lɛ/ lach llet leit leche lleche leite leite
eye oculum > *oclum òcru ochi occhiu ochiu/ochju occhio ocio òć ögg/oeucc euj (Western Piedmontese), eugg (Eastern Piedmontese) voli egl œil /œj/ uèlh ull güello ojo güeyu olho ollo
ear auriculam > *oriclam orícra ureche auricchia orecchiu/orechju orecchio orécia uréć orèggia/ureja orija orele ureglia oreille
aurelha orella orella oreja oreya orelha orella
linguam límba limbǎ lingua lingua lingua léngua léngua lengua lenga lenghe lingua langue /lɑ̃ɡ/ lenga llengua luenga lengua llingua língua lingua
hand manum manu mână manu manu mano man man man man man maun main /mɛ̃/ man man mano mano mão [mɐ̃w̃] man
skin pellem pèdhe piele peddi pelle pelle pełe pèl pel pel piel pel peau /po/ pèl pell piel piel piel pele pel
I ego (d)ègo eu eu/jè/ju eiu io (mi)[96] (mì/mè)[96] (mi/mé)[96] i(/mi)[96] jo jau je /ʒə/ ieu/jo jo yo yo yo eu eu
our nostrum nóstru nostru nostru nostru nostro nostro noster nòst, noster nòst nestri noss notre /nɔtʁ/ nòstre nostre nuestro nuestro nuesu,[97] nuestru nosso[97] noso[97]
three trēs tres trei tri tre tre tre trii trii (m)/
tre (f)
four quattuor >
bàttor patru quattru quattru quattro cuatro quàtar quater quatr cuatri quat(t)er quatre /katʁ/ quatre quatre cuatre, cuatro cuatro cuatro quatro catro
five quīnque >
chímbe cinci cincu cinque cinque çincue sinc cinch/si(n)ch sinch cinc tschintg cinq /sɛ̃k/ cinc cinc zinco, zingo cinco cinco, cincu cinco cinco
six sex ses şase sia sei sei sìe siē ses ses sîs sis six /sis/ sièis sis seis/sais seis seis seis seis
eight octō òto opt ottu ottu otto oto òt vot eut vot ot(g), och huit /ɥit/ uèch vuit güeito, ueito ocho ocho oito oito
nine novem nòbe nouă novi nove nove nove nóv nöf neuv nûv no(u)v neuf /nœf/ nòu nou nueu nueve nueve nove nove
ten decem dèche zece deci dece dieci diéxe déś des/dis des dîs diesch dix /dis/ dètz deu diez diez diez dez dez
English Latin Sardinian
Romanian Sicilian Corsican
Italian Venetian Emilian Lombard Piedmontese Friulian Romansh French Occitan Catalan Aragonese Spanish Asturian Portuguese Galician

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Romance". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ^ Herman, József; Wright, Roger (Translator) (2000). Vulgar Latin. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 96-115. ISBN 0-271-02001-6.
  3. ^ M. Paul Lewis, "Summary by language size", Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth Edition.
  4. ^ "Italian — University of Leicester". Retrieved 2015-10-22.
  6. ^ David Dalby, 1999/2000, The Linguasphere register of the world's languages and speech communities. Observatoire Linguistique, Linguasphere Press. Volume 2, pp. 390–410 (zone 51). Oxford.
  7. ^ a b Zhang, Huiying (2015). "From Latin to the Romance languages: A normal evolution to what extent?" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Chinese Studies. 3 (4): 105–111.
  8. ^ Percy, Thomas (2001). Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, Etc. Abe Books. p. 289.
  9. ^ The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information. 28 (11 ed.). 1957. p. 167.
  12. ^ From French verb diner, itself from Late Latin disjūnāre 'break one's fast' in HOAD, p. 125b.
  13. ^ Bereznay, András (2011). Erdély történetének atlasza [Atlas of the History of Transylvania]. Méry Ratio. p. 63. ISBN 978-80-89286-45-4.
  14. ^ Rochette, p. 550
  17. ^ Herman, Jozsef (1 November 2010). Vulgar Latin. Penn State Press. ISBN 0-271-04177-3., pp. 108–115
  18. ^ a b Harris, Martin; Vincent, Nigel (2001). Romance Languages. London, England, UK: Routledge.
  19. ^ Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, p.12
  20. ^ Ioan-Aurel Pop, "On the Significance of Certain Names: Romanian/Walllachian and Romania/Wallachia" (PDF). Retrieved 18 June 2018
  21. ^ Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, p.13
  24. ^ Verb; literally means "to put in mouth"
  25. ^ Ilona Czamańska, "Vlachs and Slavs in the Middle Ages and Modern Era", Res Historica, 41, Lublin, 2016
  26. ^ See Portuguese in Africa.
  27. ^ See Portuguese in Asia and Oceania.
  28. ^ See List of countries where Portuguese is an official language.
  29. ^ I.S. Nistor, "Istoria românilor din Transnistria" (The history of Romanians from Transnistria), București, 1995
  30. ^ Djuvara Neagu, “La Diaspora aroumaine aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles “ In: Les Aroumains, Paris : Publications Langues’O, 1989 (Cahiers du Centre d’étude des civilisations d’Europe centrale et du Sud-Est ; 8). P. 95-125.
  32. ^ "Reports of about 300,000 Jews who left the country after WW2". Archived from the original on 2006-08-31. Retrieved 2010-11-06.
  33. ^ "Encarta Dictionary". Microsoft Encarta 2006. Archived from the original on 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  34. ^ "Ethnologue". SIL Haley.
  35. ^ "Romance languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  36. ^ Sardos etiam, qui non Latii sunt sed Latiis associandi videntur, eiciamus, quoniam soli sine proprio vulgari esse videntur, gramaticam tanquam simie homines imitantes: nam domus nova et dominus meus locuntur. ["As for the Sardinians, who are not Italian but may be associated with Italians for our purposes, out they must go, because they alone seem to lack a vernacular of their own, instead imitating gramatica as apes do humans: for they say domus nova [my house] and dominus meus [my master]." (English translation provided by Dante Online, De Vulgari Eloquentia, I-xi)] It is unclear whether this indic.tes that Sardinian still had a two-case system at the time; modern Sardinian lacks grammatical case.
  37. ^ "NEO-ROMANTICISM IN LANGUAGE PLANNING (Edo BERNASCONI)". Archived from the original on 2015-02-04.
  38. ^ "NEO-ROMANTICISM IN LANGUAGE PLANNING (Edo BERNASCONI)". Archived from the original on 2015-07-10.
  39. ^ Peano, Giuseppe (1903). De Latino Sine Flexione. Lingua Auxiliare Internationale [1], Revista de Mathematica (Revue de Mathématiques), Tomo VIII, pp. 74–83. Fratres Bocca Editores: Torino.
  43. ^ a b Cordin, Patrizia (2011). "From verbal prefixes to direction/result markers in Romance". Linguistica. 51 (1). doi:10.4312/linguistica.51.1.201-216.
  46. ^ Haase, Martin. 2000. "Reorganization of a gender system: The Central Italian neuters". in Gender in Grammar and Cognition, ed. by Barbara Unterbeck et al., pp. 221–236. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter
  49. ^ Henri Wittmann. "Le français de Paris dans le français des Amériques" (PDF). (52.1 KB), Proceedings of the International Congress of Linguists 16.0416 (Paris, 20–25 juillet 1997). Oxford: Pergamon (CD edition).
  50. ^ Nanbakhsh, Golnaz (2012). "Moving beyond T/V pronouns of power and solidarity in interaction : Persian agreement mismatch construction". Linguistica. 52 (1). doi:10.4312/linguistica.52.1.253-266.
  51. ^ ipse originally meant "self", as in ego ipse or egomet ipse "I myself". ipse later shifted to mean "the" (still reflected in Sardinian and in the Catalan spoken in the Balearic Islands), and still later came to be a demonstrative pronoun. From -met ipse the emphatic (superlative) form metipsimum was created, later evolving into medisimum and eventually Spanish mismo, French même, Italian medesimo, which replaced both Latin ipse "self" and idem "same". The alternative form metipse eventually produced Catalan mateix, Galician-Portuguese medês. The more frequent Italian equivalent, however, is stesso, derived from the combination istum-ipsum.
  52. ^ a b Accademia della Crusca On the use of the passato remoto (in Italian) Archived June 7, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  53. ^ Used sometimes a past conditional; also used in an apodosis (then-clause) when the protasis (if-clause) is in the imperfect subjunctive. Frede Jensen, Syntaxe de l'ancien occitan (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), 244–5; Povl Skårup, Morphologie synchronique de l'ancien français (Copenhagen: Stougaard Jensen, 1994), 121–2.
  56. ^ σπάθη. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
  57. ^ Harper, Douglas. "spatha". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  58. ^ κάρα in Liddell and Scott.
  59. ^ κόλαφος in Liddell and Scott.
  60. ^ Harper, Douglas. "coup". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  61. ^ κατά in Liddell and Scott.
  62. ^ Harper, Douglas. "-ize". Online Etymology Dictionary..
  63. ^ Harper, Douglas. "-ist". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  64. ^ Wolf Dietrich, "Griechisch und Romanisch", Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik, vol 7: Kontakt, Migration und Kunstsprachen: Kontrastivität, Klassifikation und Typologie, eds. Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin & Christian Schmitt (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998), 121–34:123–4.
  65. ^ Originally formal, now equalizing or informal.
  66. ^ Likewise Spanish usted < vuestra merced, Catalan vostè < vostra mercè.
  67. ^ Note that the current Portuguese spelling (Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990) abolished the use of the diaeresis for this purpose.
  68. ^ Pope (1934).
  70. ^ Technically, Sardinian is one of the Southern Romance languages. The same vowel outcome occurred in a small strip running across southern Italy (the Lausberg Zone), and is thought to have occurred in the Romance languages of northern Africa.
  71. ^ Palmer (1954).
  72. ^ cauda would produce French **choue, Italian */kɔda/, Occitan **cauda, Romanian **caudă.
  73. ^ Kaze, Jeffery W. (1991). "Metaphony and Two Models for the Description of Vowel Systems". Phonology. 8 (1): 163–170. doi:10.1017/s0952675700001329. JSTOR 4420029.
  74. ^ Calabrese, Andrea. "Metaphony" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 2012-05-15.
  75. ^ Álvaro Arias. El morfema de ‘neutro de materia’ en asturiano. Santiago de Compostela, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1999, I Premio «Dámaso Alonso» de Investigación Filológica.
  77. ^ Álvaro Arias. "La armonización vocálica en fonología funcional (de lo sintagmático en fonología a propósito de dos casos de metafonía hispánica)", Moenia 11 (2006): 111–139.
  81. ^ Espinosa, Aurelio M. (1911). "Metipsimus in Spanish and French". PMLA. 26 (2): 356–378. doi:10.2307/456649. JSTOR 456649.
  82. ^ Formerly ⟨qü⟩ in Brazilian Portuguese
  83. ^ Formerly ⟨gü⟩ in Brazilian Portuguese
  84. ^ Ethnologue, Languages of the World, 15th edition, SIL International, 2005.
  85. ^ "Ditzionàriu in línia". Archived from the original on 2017-10-08. Retrieved 2013-09-14.
  87. ^ "Dictionary Sicilian – Italian". Retrieved 2010-11-06.
  90. ^ "Dictionary English–Friulian Friulian–English". Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2011-07-31.
  94. ^ Developed from *pluviūtam.
  97. ^ a b c Developed from an assimilated form *nossum rather than from nostrum.



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External links[edit]