The Romance languages, also known as the Latin, Neo-Latin, or Latinic languages, are the that Language family from Vulgar Latin.
They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages of the Indo-European language family.The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are:
Most of the Romance-speaking area in Europe has traditionally been a dialect continuum, where the speech variety of a location differs only slightly from that of a neighboring location, but over a longer distance these differences can accumulate to the point where two remote locations speak what may be unambiguously characterized as separate languages. This makes drawing language boundaries difficult, and thus there is no unambiguous way to divide the Romance varieties into individual languages. Even the criterion of mutual intelligibility can become ambiguous when it comes to determining whether two language varieties belong to the same language or not.
The following is a list of groupings of Romance languages, with some languages chosen to exemplify each grouping. Not all languages are listed, and the groupings should not be interpreted as well-separated genetic clades in a tree model:
French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of the European Union. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan were the official languages of the defunct Latin Union; and French and Spanish are two of the six official languages of the United Nations. Outside Europe, French language, Portuguese and Spanish language are spoken and enjoy official status in various countries that emerged from the respective .
With almost 500 million speakers worldwide, Spanish is an official language in Spain and in nine countries of South America, home to about half that continent's population; in six countries of Central America (all except Belize); and in Mexico. In the Caribbean, it is official in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. In all these countries, 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 one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea. Spanish was one of the official languages in the Philippines in Southeast Asia until 1973. In the 1987 constitution, Spanish was removed as an official language (replaced by English), and was listed as an optional/voluntary language along with Arabic. It is currently spoken by a minority and taught in the school curriculum.
Portuguese, in its original homeland, Portugal, is spoken by almost the entire population of 10 million. As the official language of Brazil, it is spoken by more than 200 million people, as well as in neighboring parts of Brasiguayos and northern Uruguay. This accounts for slightly more than half the population of South America, making Portuguese the most spoken official Romance language in a single country.
Portuguese 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 native language by perhaps 16 million residents of that continent. In Asia, Portuguese is co-official with other languages in East Timor and Macau, while most Portuguese-speakers in Asia—some 400,000See Portuguese in Asia and Oceania.—are in Japan due to Dekasegi of Japanese Brazilians. In North America 1,000,000 people speak Portuguese as their home language, mainly immigrants from Brazil, Portugal, and other Portuguese-speaking countries and their descendants.See list of countries where Portuguese is an official language. 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 co-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 and government services in French theoretically mandated to be provided nationwide. In parts of the Caribbean, such as Haiti, French has official status, but most people speak Creole language such as Haitian Creole as their native language. French also has official status in much of Africa, with relatively few native speakers but larger numbers of second language speakers.
Although Italy also had some colonial possessions before World War II, its language did not remain official after the end of the colonial domination. As a result, Italian language outside Italy and Switzerland is now spoken only as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America and South America and Australia. In some former Italian colonies in Africa—namely Libya, Eritrea and Somalia—it is spoken by a few educated people in commerce and government.
Romania did not establish a colonial empire. The native range of Romanian includes not only the Moldova, where it is the dominant language and spoken by a majority of the population, but neighboring areas in Serbia (Vojvodina and the Bor District), Bulgaria, Hungary, and Ukraine (Bukovina, Budjak) and in some villages between the Dniester and Bug River rivers.I.S. Nistor, "Istoria românilor din Transnistria" (The history of Romanians from Transnistria), București, 1995 As with Italian, Romanian is spoken outside of its ethnic range by immigrant communities. In Europe, Romanian-speakers form about two percent of the population in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Romanian is also spoken in Israel by Romanian Jews, where it is the native language of five percent of the population, 1993 Statistical Abstract of Israel reports 250,000 speakers of Romanian in Israel, while the 1995 census puts the total figure of the Israeli population at 5,548,523 and is spoken by many more as a secondary language. The Aromanian language is spoken today by Aromanians in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Greece.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). pp. 95–125. Flavio Biondo was the first scholar to have observed (in 1435) linguistic affinities between the Romanian and Italian language languages, as well as their common Latin origin.Maiden, Martin (2010). "Italian's long-lost sister: the Romanian language and why Italianists should know about it". The Italianist. 30 (sup2): 29–43. doi:10.1080/02614340.2010.11917476. S2CID 149202032.
The total of 880 million native speakers of Romance languages (ca. 2020) are divided as follows:
Catalan is the official language of Andorra. In Spain, it is co-official with Spanish in Catalonia, the Valencian Community (under the name Valencian), and the Balearic Islands, and it is recognized, but not official, in an area of Aragon known as La Franja. 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 three million 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 language, Sardinian and Franco-Provençal in Italy; and Romansh language in Switzerland.
The remaining Romance languages survive mostly as spoken languages for informal contact. National governments have historically viewed linguistic diversity as an economic, administrative or military liability, as well as a potential source of separatism movements; therefore, they have generally fought to eliminate it, by extensively promoting the use of the official language, restricting the use of the other languages in the media, recognizing them as mere "dialects", or even persecuting them. As a result, all of these languages are considered endangered to varying degrees according to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, ranging from "vulnerable" (e.g. Sicilian and Venetian) to "severely endangered" (Franco-Provençal, most of the Occitan language varieties). Since the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities has allowed some of these languages to start recovering their prestige and lost rights. Yet it is unclear whether these political changes will be enough to reverse the decline of minority Romance languages.
During the Empire's decline, and after its fragmentation and the collapse of its Western half in the fifth and sixth centuries, the spoken varieties of Latin became more isolated from each other, with the western dialects coming under heavy Germanic influence (the Goths and Franks in particular) and the eastern dialects coming under Slavic influence. The dialects diverged from Latin at an accelerated rate and eventually evolved into a continuum of recognizably different typologies. The colonial empires established by Portugal, Spanish Empire, and France from the fifteenth century onward spread their languages to the other continents to such an extent that about two-thirds of all Romance language speakers today live outside Europe.
Despite other influences (e.g. substratum from pre-Roman languages, especially Continental Celtic languages; and superstratum from later Germanic or Slavic languages invasions), the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin. However, some notable differences exist between today's Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the declension system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of prepositions. By most measures, Sardinian and Italian are the least divergent languages from Latin, while French has changed the most.«if the Romance languages are compared with Latin, it is seen that by most measures Sardinian and Italian are least differentiated and French most (though in vocabulary Romanian has changed most).» However, all Romance languages are closer to each other than to classical Latin.
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. With the rise of the Roman Empire, spoken Latin spread first throughout Italy and then through Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, and southeastern Europe, and North Africa along parts of West Asia.
Latin reached a stage when innovations became generalised around the sixth and seventh centuries.
After that time and within two hundred years, it became a language death since "the Romanized people of Europe could no longer understand texts that were read aloud or recited to them.", pp. 108–115 By the eighth and ninth centuries Latin gave way to Romance.
British Latin and African Romance—the forms of Vulgar Latin used in Roman 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 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.
The surviving local Romance languages were Dalmatian and Common Romanian.
na vota |
criature |
sciuscià |
cantà |
bella |
vierno |
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", 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.
By this time, and possibly as early as the 6th century according to Price (1984), the Romance lects had split apart enough to be able to speak of separate Gallo-Romance, Ibero-Romance, Italo-Romance and Eastern Romance languages. Some researchers have postulated that the major divergences in the spoken dialects began or accelerated considerably in the 5th century, as the formerly widespread and efficient communication networks of the Western Roman Empire rapidly broke down, leading to the total disappearance of the Western Roman Empire by the end of the century. During the period between the 5th–10th centuries AD Romance vernaculars documentation is scarce as the normal writing language used was Medieval Latin, with vernacular writing only beginning in earnest in the 11th or 12th century. The earliest such texts are the Indovinello Veronese from the eight century and the Oaths of Strasbourg from the second half of the ninth century.
| Latin | (Ea) semper antequam cenat fenestram claudit. |
(Ièdde) achiùde sèmbe la fenèstre prime de mangè. |
(Ella) zarra siempre a finestra antes de cenar. |
(Ea/Nâsa) ãncljidi/nkidi totna firida/fireastra ninti di tsinã. |
(Ella) pieslla/ciarra siempres la ventana enantes de cenar. |
(Ella) tranca siempri la ventana enantis de cenar. |
(Ella) sempre/tostemps tanca la finestra abans de sopar. |
Ella chjode/chjude sempre lu/u purtellu avanti/nanzu di cenà. |
Edda/Idda sarra/serra sempri u purteddu nanzu/prima di cinà. |
Jala insiara sianpro el balkáun anínč de kenúr. |
(Le) la sàra sèmper la fenèstra prìma de diznà. |
(Lē) la sèra sèmpar sù la fnèstra prima ad snàr. |
(Lî) la sèra sänper la fnèstra prémma ed dṡnèr. |
Ad sira lé la sèra seimpar la finéstra prima da seina. |
(Ella) afecha siempri la ventana antis de cenal. |
(Le) sarre toltin/tojor la fenétra avan de goutâ/dinar/sopar. |
Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper. |
(Jê) e siere simpri il barcon prin di cenâ. |
(Ela) pecha/fecha sempre a fiestra/xanela antes de cear. |
Idda chjude sempri lu balconi primma di cinà. |
(Ella/lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. |
Ella cerra sempre la ventana antes de cenar. |
Badiot: Ëra stlüj dagnora la finestra impröma de cenè. Centro Cadore: La sera sempre la fenestra gnante de disna. Auronzo di Cadore: La sera sempro la fenestra davoi de disnà. Gherdëina: Ëila stluj for l viere dan maië da cëina. |
(Eilla) pecha/zarra siempre la ventana enantias de cenare. |
(Le) a saera sempre u barcun primma de cenà. |
(Lé) la sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà. |
(Lee) la sara sù semper la finestra primma de disnà/scenà. |
(Elle) à fàrm toujour là fnèt àvan k'à manj. |
(Eilha) cerra siempre la bentana/jinela atrás de cenar. |
Essa 'nzerra sempe 'a fenesta primma d'a cena / 'e magnà. |
Lli barre tréjous la crouésie devaunt de daîner. |
(Ela) barra/tanca sempre/totjorn la fenèstra abans de sopar. |
Ale frunme toudi ch'croésèe édvint éd souper. |
Chila a sara sèmper la fnestra dnans ëd fé sin-a/dnans ëd siné. |
(Ela) fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. |
(Lia) la ciud sëmpra la fnèstra prëma ad magnè. |
(Ea) închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. |
Ella clauda/serra adina la fanestra avant ch'ella tschainia. |
Issa serrat semp(i)ri sa bentana in antis de cenai |
Issa serrat semper sa bentana in antis de chenàre. |
Edda sarra sempri lu balchoni primma di zinà. |
Iḍḍa ncasa sempri a finesṭṛa prima 'i manciari â sira. |
(Ella) siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar/comer. |
Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenà. |
Lia chiude sempre la finestra prima de cenà. |
(Eła) ła sara/sera senpre ła fenestra vanti de diznar. |
Èle sere todi l'fignèsse divant d'soper. |
+ Romance-based creoles and pidgins |
Li toujou fèmen fenèt la avan li mange. |
Li touzour ferm lafnet avan (li) manze. |
Y pou touzour ferm lafnet aven y manze. |
E muhe semper ta sera e bentana promé ku e kome. |
Êl fechâ sempre janela antes de jantâ. |
Ta cerrá él siempre con la ventana antes de cená. |
Ele ta cerrá siempre ventana antes de cená. |
Some of the divergence comes from semantic change: where the same root words have developed different meanings. For example, the Portuguese word fresta is descended from Latin fenestra "window" (and is thus cognate to French fenêtre, Italian finestra, Romanian fereastră and so on), but now means "skylight" and "slit". Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as hiniestra in Spanish, or dropped out of use entirely. The Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning "to defenestration" and fenestrado meaning "replete with windows" also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin.
Likewise, Portuguese also has the word cear, a cognate of Italian cenare and Spanish cenar, but uses it in the sense of "to have a late supper" in most varieties, while the preferred word for "to dine" is jantar (related to archaic Spanish yantar "to eat") because of semantic changes in the 19th century. Galician has both fiestra (from medieval fẽestra, the ancestor of standard Portuguese fresta) and the less frequently used ventá and xanela.
As an alternative to lei (originally the genitive form), Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the other words for "she", but it is hardly ever used in speaking.
Spanish, Asturian, and Leonese ventana and Mirandese and Sardinian bentana come from Latin ventus "wind" (cf. English window, etymologically 'wind eye'), and Portuguese janela, Galician xanela, Mirandese jinela from Latin *ianuella "small opening", a derivative of ianua "door".
Sardinian balcone (alternative for ventàna/bentàna) comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon (from Italian balcone), Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi (alternative for purtellu).
Creoles of French:
Creoles of Spanish:
Creoles of Portuguese:
The concept was first developed in 1903 by Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano, under the title Latino sine flexione.Peano, Giuseppe (1903). "De Latino Sine Flexione. Lingua Auxiliare Internationale" , Revista de Mathematica ( Revue de Mathématiques), Tomo VIII, pp. 74–83. Fratres Bocca Editores: Torino. He wanted to create a naturalistic international language, as opposed to an autonomous constructed language like Esperanto or Volapük which were designed for maximal simplicity of lexicon and derivation of words. Peano used Latin as the base of his language because, as he described it, Latin had been the international scientific language until the end of the 18th century.
Other languages developed include Idiom Neutral (1902), Interlingue-Occidental (1922), Interlingua (1951) and Lingua Franca Nova (1998). The most famous and successful of these is Interlingua. Each of these languages has attempted to varying degrees to achieve a pseudo-Latin vocabulary as common as possible to living Romance languages. Some languages have been constructed specifically for communication among speakers of Romance languages, the Pan-Romance languages.
There are also languages created for artistic purposes only, such as Talossan. Because Latin is a very well attested ancient language, some amateur linguists have even constructed Romance languages that mirror real languages that developed from other ancestral languages. These include Brithenig (which mirrors Welsh language), Breathanach (mirrors Irish language), Wenedyk (mirrors Polish language), Þrjótrunn (mirrors Icelandic), and Helvetian (mirrors German language).
Many final consonants were rare, occurring only in certain prepositions (e.g. ad "towards", apud "at, near (a person)"), conjunctions (sed "but"), demonstratives (e.g. illud "that (over there)", hoc "this"), and nominative singular noun forms, especially of neuter nouns (e.g. lac "milk", mel "honey", cor "heart"). Many of these prepositions and conjunctions were replaced by others, while the nouns were regularized into forms based on their oblique stems that avoided the final consonants (e.g. *lacte, *mele, *core).
Even in Classical Latin, final -am, -em, -um (inflectional suffixes of the accusative case) were often elision in poetic meter, suggesting the m was weakly pronounced, probably marking the nasal vowel of the vowel before it. This nasal vowel lost its nasalization in the Romance languages except in monosyllables, where it became e.g. Spanish quien < quem "whom", French rien "anything" < rem "thing"; note especially French and Catalan mon < meum "my (m.sg.)" which are derived from monosyllabic > *, whereas Spanish disyllabic mío and Portuguese and Catalan monosyllabic meu are derived from disyllabic > *.As a result, only the following final consonants occurred in Vulgar Latin:
Final -t was eventually lost 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 < Latin a). Hence amat "he loves" > Old French aime but venit "he comes" > Old French vient: the was never dropped and survives into Modern French in liaison, e.g. vient-il? "is he coming?" (the corresponding in aime-t-il? is analogical, not inherited). Old French also kept the third-person plural ending -nt intact.
In Italo-Romance and the Eastern Romance languages, eventually all final consonants were either lost or protected by an epenthetic vowel, except for some articles and a few monosyllabic prepositions con, per, in. Modern Standard Italian still has very few consonant-final words, although Romanian has resurfaced them through later loss of final and . 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 in northern Italy did not occur until the 7th or 8th century, after the Vulgar Latin period, and the presence of many former final consonants is betrayed by the syntactic gemination ( raddoppiamento sintattico) that they trigger. It is also thought that after a long vowel became rather than simply disappearing: nōs > noi "we", crās > crai "tomorrow" (southern Italy).
In unstressed syllables, the resulting diphthongs were simplified: canēs > * > cani "dogs"; amīcās > * > amiche "(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 and , 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 < -a. Hence masculine frīgidum "cold" > Old French froit > froid , feminine frīgidam > Old French froide > froide .
The voiced and (represented by and , respectively) both developed a fricative as an intervocalic allophone.Pope (1934). This is clear from the orthography; in medieval times, the spelling of a consonantal is often used for what had been a in Classical Latin, or the two spellings were used interchangeably. In many Romance languages (Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.), this fricative later developed into a ; but in others (Spanish, Galician, some Catalan and Occitan dialects, etc.) reflexes of and simply merged into a single phoneme.
Several other consonants were "softened" in intervocalic position in Western Romance (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Northern Italian), but normally not phonemically in the rest of Italy (except some cases of "elegant" or Ecclesiastical words), nor apparently at all in Romanian. The dividing line between the two sets of dialects is called the La Spezia–Rimini Line and is one of the most important isogloss bundles of the Romance dialects.
The changes (instances of diachronic lenition resulting in phonological restructuring) are as follows: Single voiceless plosives became voiced: -p-, -t-, -c- > -b-, -d-, -g-. Subsequently, in some languages they were further weakened, either becoming or approximants, (as in Spanish) or disappearing entirely (such as and lost between vowels in French, but > ). The following example shows progressive weakening of original /t/: e.g. vītam > Italian vita , Portuguese vida (European Portuguese ), Spanish vida (Southern Peninsular Spanish ), and French vie . Some scholars have speculated that these sound changes may be due in part to the influence of Continental Celtic languages, while scholarship of the past few decades has proposed internal motivations.The sound /h/ was lost but later reintroduced into individual Romance languages. The so-called h aspiré "aspirated h" in French, now completely silent, was a borrowing from Frankish. In Spanish, word-initial /f/ changed to /h/ during its Old Spanish and was lost afterwards (for example farina > harina). Romanian acquired it most likely from the adstrate.
Consonant length is no longer phonemically distinctive in most Romance languages. However some languages of Italy (Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, and numerous other varieties of central and southern Italy) do have long consonants like , etc., where the doubling indicates either actual length or, in the case of plosives and , a short hold before the consonant is released, in many cases with distinctive lexical value: e.g. note (notes) vs. notte (night), cade (s/he, it falls) vs. cadde (s/he, it fell), caro (dear, expensive) vs. carro (cart, car). They may even occur at the beginning of words in Romanesco, Neapolitan, Sicilian and other southern varieties, and are occasionally indicated in writing, e.g. Sicilian cchiù (more), and ccà (here). In general, the consonants , , and are long at the start of a word, while the archiphoneme is realised as a trill consonant in the same position. In much of central and southern Italy, the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ weaken synchronically to fricative ʃ and ʒ between vowels, while their geminate congeners do not, e.g. cacio (cheese) vs. caccio (I chase). In Italian the geminates /ʃʃ/, /ɲɲ/, and /ʎʎ/ are pronounced as long ʃʃ, ɲɲ, and ʎʎ between vowels, but normally reduced to short following pause: lasciare 'let, leave' or la sciarpa 'the scarf' with ʃʃ, but post-pausal sciarpa with ʃ.
A few languages have regained secondary geminate consonants. The double consonants of Piedmontese exist only after stressed , written ë, and are not etymological: vëdde (Latin vidēre, to see), sëcca (Latin sicca, dry, feminine of sech). In standard Catalan and Occitan, there exists a geminate sound written ŀl (Catalan) or ll (Occitan), but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech in both languages.
+ Evolution of stressed vowels in early Romance | ||||||||
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.Allen (2003) states: "There appears to have been no great difference in quality between long and short a, but in the case of the close and mid vowels ( i and u, e and o) the long appear to have been appreciably closer than the short." He then goes on to the historical development, quotations from various authors (from around the second century AD), as well as evidence from older inscriptions where "e" stands for normally short i, and "i" for long e, etc. So, for example ē was pronounced close-mid vowel while ĕ was pronounced open-mid vowel , and ī was pronounced close vowel while ĭ was pronounced near-close vowel .
During the Proto-Romance period, phonemic length distinctions were lost. Vowels came to be automatically pronounced long in stressed, (i.e. when followed by only one consonant), and pronounced short everywhere else. This situation is still maintained in modern Italian: cade "he falls" vs. cadde "he fell".
The Proto-Romance loss of phonemic length originally produced a system with nine different quality distinctions in monophthongs, where only original had merged. Soon, however, many of these vowels coalesced:
Further variants are found in southern Italy and Corsica, which also boasts a completely distinct system.
+Outcome of stressed Classical Latin vowels in dialects of southern Italy, Sardinia and Corsica !Classical Latin !Proto-Romance !Senisese !Castel-mezzano !Neapolitan !Sicilian !Verbi-carese !Caro-vignese !Nuorese Sardinian !Southern Corsican !Taravo Corsican !Northern Corsican !Cap de Corse | ||||||||||||
ā | * | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ | /a/ |
ă | ||||||||||||
au | */aw/ | /ɔ/? | /o/? | /ɔ/? | /ɔ/? | /ɔ/? | /ɔ/? | /ɔ/ | /o/? | /ɔ/? | /o/? | |
ĕ, ae | * | /ɛ/ | /e/ | /ɛ/ | /ɛ/ | /ɛ/ | /ɛ/ | /ɛ/ | /e/ | /e/ | /ɛ/ | /e/ (/ɛ/) |
ē, oe | * | /e/ | /i/ | /ɪ/ (/ɛ/) | /e/ | /e/ | ||||||
ĭ | * | /i/ | /ɪ/ | /i/ | /i/ | /ɛ/ | ||||||
ī | * | /i/ | /i/ | /i/ | /i/ | /i/ | /i/ | |||||
ŏ | * | /ɔ/ | /o/ | /ɔ/ | /ɔ/ | /ɔ/ | /ɔ/ | /ɔ/ | /o/ | /o/ | /ɔ/ | /o/ |
ō, ( au) | * | /o/ | /u/ | /ʊ/ (/ɔ/) | /o/ | |||||||
ŭ | * | /u/ | /u/ | /ʊ/ | /u/ | /u/ | /ɔ/ | |||||
ū | * | /u/ | /u/ | /u/ | /u/ | /u/ |
The Sardinian-type vowel system is also found in a small region belonging to the Lausberg area (also known as Lausberg zone; compare ) of southern Italy, in southern Basilicata, and there is evidence that the Romanian-type "compromise" vowel system was once characteristic of most of southern Italy, although it is now limited to a small area in western Basilicata centered on the Castelmezzano dialect, the area being known as Vorposten, the German word for 'outpost'. The Sicilian vowel system, now generally thought to be a development based on the Italo-Western system, is also represented in southern Italy, in southern Cilento, Calabria and the southern tip of Apulia, and may have been more widespread in the past.
The greatest variety of vowel systems outside of southern Italy is found in Corsica, where the Italo-Western type is represented in most of the north and center and the Sardinian type in the south, as well as a system resembling the Sicilian vowel system (and even more closely the Carovignese system) in the Cap Corse region; finally, in between the Italo-Western and Sardinian system is found, in the Taravo region, a unique vowel system that cannot be derived from any other system, which has reflexes like Sardinian for the most part, but the short high vowels of Latin are uniquely reflected as mid-low vowels.
The Proto-Romance allophonic vowel-length system was phonemicized in the Gallo-Romance languages as a result of the loss of many final vowels. Some northern Italian languages (e.g. Friulian) still maintain this secondary phonemic length, but most languages dropped it by either diphthongizing or shortening the new long vowels.
French phonemicized a third vowel length system around AD 1300 as a result of the sound change /VsC/ > /VhC/ > (where V is any vowel and C any consonant). This vowel length began to be lost in Early Modern French, but the long vowels are still usually marked with a circumflex (and continue to be distinguished regionally, chiefly in Belgium). A fourth vowel length system, still non-phonemic, has now arisen: All nasal vowels as well as the oral vowels (which mostly derive from former long vowels) are pronounced long in all stressed , and all vowels are pronounced long in syllables closed by the voiced fricatives .
ae became 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 < short e: e.g. caelum "sky" > French ciel, Spanish/Italian cielo, Portuguese céu , with the same vowel as in mele "honey" > French/Spanish miel, Italian miele, Portuguese mel . Some words show an early merger of ae with , as in praeda "booty" > * prēda > French proie (vs. expected ** priée), Italian preda (not ** prieda) "prey"; or faenum "hay" > * fēnum > Spanish heno, French foin (but Italian fieno /fjɛno/).
oe generally merged with : poenam "punishment" > Romance * > Spanish/Italian pena, French peine; foedus "ugly" > Romance * > 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 ūnusPalmer (1954).) and so oe was mostly limited to Greek loanwords, which were typically learned (high-register) terms.
au merged with ō 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 as the usual reflex, but this post-dates diphthongization of and the French-specific palatalization > (hence causa > French chose, Italian cosa not ** cuosa). Spanish has , but Portuguese spelling maintains , which has developed to (and still remains as in some dialects, and in others). Occitan, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many other minority Romance languages still have while in Romanian it underwent diaresis like in aurum > aur (a-ur). A few common words, however, show an early merger with ō , evidently reflecting a generalization of the popular Roman pronunciation: e.g. French queue, Italian coda , Occitan co(d)a, Romanian coadă (all meaning "tail") must all derive from cōda rather than Classical cauda. cauda would produce French **choue, Italian , Occitan **cauda, Romanian **caudă. Similarly, Spanish oreja, Portuguese orelha, French oreille, Romanian ureche, and Sardinian olícra, orícla "ear" must derive from ōric(u)la rather than Classical auris (Occitan aurelha was probably influenced by the unrelated ausir < audīre "to hear"), and the form oricla is in fact reflected in the Appendix Probi.
Some examples:
These diphthongization had the effect of reducing or eliminating the distinctions between open-mid and close-mid vowels in many languages. In Spanish and Romanian, all open-mid vowels were diphthongized, and the distinction disappeared entirely. Portuguese is the most conservative in this respect, keeping the seven-vowel system more or less unchanged (but with changes in particular circumstances, e.g. due to metaphony). Other than before palatalized consonants, Catalan keeps intact, but split in a complex fashion into and then coalesced again in the standard dialect (Eastern Catalan) in such a way that most original have reversed their quality to become .
In French and Italian, the distinction between open-mid and close-mid vowels occurred only in closed syllables. Standard Italian more or less maintains this. In French, /e/ and merged by the twelfth century or so, and the distinction between and was eliminated without merging by the sound changes , . Generally this led to a situation where both and occur allophonically, with the close-mid vowels in and the open-mid vowels in . In French, both and were partly rephonemicized: Both and occur in open syllables as a result of , and both and occur in closed syllables as a result of .
Old French also had numerous falling diphthongs resulting from diphthongization before palatal consonants or from a fronted /j/ originally following palatal consonants in Proto-Romance or later: e.g. pācem /patsʲe/ "peace" > PWR */padzʲe/ (lenition) > OF paiz /pajts/; * punctum "point" > Gallo-Romance */ponʲto/ > */pojɲto/ (fronting) > OF point /põjnt/. During the Old French period, preconsonantal /l/ ɫ vocalized to /w/, producing many new falling diphthongs: e.g. dulcem "sweet" > PWR */doltsʲe/ > OF dolz /duɫts/ > douz /duts/; fallet "fails, is deficient" > OF falt > faut "is needed"; bellus "beautiful" > OF bels > beaus . By the end of the Middle French period, all falling diphthongs either monophthongized or switched to rising diphthongs: proto-OF > early OF > modern spelling > mod. French .
In Portuguese, /n/ between vowels was dropped, and the resulting hiatus eliminated through vowel contraction of various sorts, often producing diphthongs: manum, *manōs > PWR * manu, ˈmanos "hand(s)" > mão, mãos ; canem, canēs "dog(s)" > PWR * kane, ˈkanes > * can, ˈcanes > cão, cães ; ratiōnem, ratiōnēs "reason(s)" > PWR * raˈdʲzʲone, raˈdʲzʲones > * raˈdzon, raˈdzones > razão, razões (Brazil), (Portugal). Sometimes the nasalization was eliminated: lūna "moon" > Galician-Portuguese lũa > lua; vēna "vein" > Galician-Portuguese vẽa > veia. Nasal vowels that remained actually tend to be raised (rather than lowered, as in French): fīnem "end" > fim ; centum "hundred" > PWR tʲsʲɛnto > cento ; pontem "bridge" > PWR pɔnte > ponte (Brazil), (Portugal).
Romanian shows evidence of past nasalization phenomena, the loss of palatal nasal ɲ in vie < Lat. vinia, and the rhotacism of intervocalic /n/ in words like mărunt < Lat. minutu for example. The effect of nasalization is observed in vowel closing to /i ɨ u/ before single /n/ and nasal+consonant clusters. Latin /nn/ and /m/ did not cause the same effect.
+ Evolution of unstressed vowels in early Italo-Western Romance ! rowspan=3 | Latin ! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | Proto- Romance ! rowspan="2" | Final-unstressed | ||||||
1 Traditional academic transcription in Romance studies. |
Originally in Proto-Romance, the same nine vowels developed in unstressed as stressed syllables.
In Sardinian, they coalesced into five vowels in the same way as in stressed syllables.
In Italo-Western Romance, they coalesced into seven vowels, as in stressed syllables, but then unstressed low-mid merged into the high-mid vowels , resulting in a five-vowel system in unstressed syllables.
Word-final short -u appears to have been raised to , rather than lowered to . However, it is possible that in reality, final comes from long * -ū < -um, where original final -m caused vowel lengthening as well as nasalization. Evidence of this comes from Rhaeto-Romance, in particular Sursilvan, which preserves reflexes of both final -us and -um, and where the latter, but not the former, triggers metaphony. This suggests the development -us > > , but -um > > .The outcome of -am -em -om would be the same regardless of whether lengthening occurred, and that -im was already rare in Classical Latin, and appears to have barely survived in Proto-Romance. The only likely survival is in "-teen" numerals such as trēdecim "thirteen" > Italian tredici. This favors the vowel-lengthening hypothesis -im > > ; but notice unexpected decem > Italian dieci (rather than expected *diece). It is possible that dieci comes from * decim, which analogically replaced decem based on the -decim ending; but it is also possible that the final /i/ in dieci represents an irregular development of some other sort and that the process of analogy worked in the other direction.
In final unstressed syllables, most Italo-Western Romance languages show further coalescence, although the original five-vowel system was preserved as-is in some of the more conservative central Italian languages:
Various later changes happened in individual languages, e.g.:
+ Examples of evolution of final unstressed vowels: From least- to most-changed languages ! rowspan="2" | Latin !! Proto-Italo- Western1 !! Conservative Central Italian1 !! Italian !! Portuguese !! Spanish !! Catalan !! Old French !! Modern French | |
une | ||
porte | ||
sept | ||
mer | ||
paix | ||
part | ||
vérité | ||
mère | ||
vingt | ||
quatre | ||
huit | ||
quand | ||
quart | ||
un | ||
port |
Generally, those languages south and east of the La Spezia–Rimini Line (Romanian and Central-Southern Italian) maintained intertonic vowels, while those to the north and west (Western Romance) dropped all except /a/. Standard Italian generally maintained intertonic vowels, but typically raised unstressed /e/ > /i/. Examples:
While most of the 23 basic Latin letters have maintained their phonetic value, for some of them it has diverged considerably; and the new letters added since the Middle Ages have been put to different uses in different scripts. Some letters, notably H and Q, have been variously combined in digraphs or trigraphs (see below) to represent phonetic phenomena that could not be recorded with the basic Latin alphabet, or to get around previously established spelling conventions. Most languages added auxiliary marks () to some letters, for these and other purposes.
The spelling systems of most Romance languages are fairly simple, and consistent within any language. Spelling rules are typically phonemic (as opposed to being strictly phonetic); as a result of this, the actual pronunciation of standard written forms can vary substantially according to the speaker's accent (which may differ by region) or the position of a sound in the word or utterance (Allophone).
The following letters have notably different values between languages, or between Latin and the Romance languages:
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.
While the digraphs CH, PH, RH and TH were at one time used in many words of Greek origin, most languages have now replaced them with C/QU, F, R and T. Only French has kept these etymology spellings, which now represent or , , and , respectively.
Depending on the language, some letter-diacritic combinations may be considered distinct letters, e.g. for the purposes of lexical sorting. This is the case, for example, of Romanian ș () and Spanish ñ ().
The following are the most common use of diacritics in Romance languages.
In particular, all Romance languages capitalize (use uppercase for the first letter of) the following words: the first word of each complete sentence, most words in names of people, places, and organizations, and most words in titles of books. The Romance languages do not follow the German practice of capitalizing all nouns including common ones. Unlike English, the names of months, days of the weeks, and derivatives of proper nouns are usually not capitalized: thus, in Italian one capitalizes Francia ("France") and Francesco ("Francis"), but not francese ("French") or francescano ("Franciscan"). However, each language has some exceptions to this general rule.
man | homō, hominem | ómine | om | omu ˈɔmʊ | ommo ˈɔmːə | omu | uomo ˈwɔmo | òm(en~an)o ˈɔm(en~an)o; òm ˈɔŋ | òmmo ɔmu | òm(en) | òm(en) ˈɔmɐn | òm ˈɔm | om | um | homo | homme | òme ˈɔme | home | hom(br)e | hombre | home | homem | home |
woman, wife | domina, femina, mulier, mulierem | Fémina, muzère | doamna, femeie, muiere | mugghieri mʊˈgːjeri | femmena femːənə, mugliera muʎeɾə | donna, moglie | donna dɔnːa | dòna ˈdɔna; fémena ˈfemena; mujer muˈjer | mogê/dònna | mujér | dòna dɔnɐ /femna,femnɐ / miee/moglier ˈmje | fomna / fomla ˈfʊmnɐ/ˈfʊmlɐ, mojé mʊˈje | muîr | muglier | fèna | femme Old French moillier | femna/molhèr ˈfɛnːɒ/ muˈʎɛ | dona, muller | muller | mujer | muyer | mulher | muller |
son | fīlium | fízu | fiu | figghiu ˈfɪgːi̯ʊ | figlio ˈfiʎə | figliu/figliolu | figlio ˈfiʎːo | fïo ˈfi.o; fiòƚo ˈfi̯ɔ.e̯o; fiol ˈfi̯ɔl~ˈfi̯ol | figeu fiˈdʒø / figleu ˈfiˈʎø | fiōl | fiœl ˈfi̯ø | fieul ˈfi̯øl / fij fi | fi | figl, fegl fiʎ | fily, fely | fils | filh fil | fill | fillo | hijo | fíu | filho | fillo |
water | aquam | àbba | apă | acqua ˈakːua | acqua akːu̯ə | acqua | acqua akːwa | aqua~aqoa ˈaku̯a~ˈakoa; aba~aiva ˈaba~ˈai̯va; buba ˈbuba; łénça ˈensa~ˈlensa | ægoa ˈɛgu̯a/ aigoa ai̯ɡu̯a | aqua | aqua/ova/eiva | eva ˈevɐ | aghe | aua | égoua | eau | aiga ˈai̯gɒ | aigua | aigua, augua | agua | agua | água | auga |
fire | focum | fócu | foc | focu ˈfɔkʊ | foco/(pere, from Greek "πυρ") | focu | fuoco fu̯ɔko | fógo ˈfogo; hógo ˈhogo | fêugo ˈføgu | foeugh | fœg ˈføk | feu ˈfø | fûc | fieu | fuè | feu | fuòc ˈfy̯ɔk ~ fjɔk | foc | fuego | fuego | fueu | fogo | fogo |
rain | pluviam | próida | ploaie | chiuvuta ki̯ʊˈvʊtaDeveloped from * pluviūtam. | chiuvuta | pioggia | pioggia pi̯ɔdʒːa | piova ˈpi̯ɔva~ˈpi̯ova | ciêuva ˈtʃøa | pioeuva | piœva ˈpi̯øvɐ | pieuva ˈpi̯øvɐ | ploe | plievgia | pllove | pluie | pluèja ˈply̯ɛd͡ʒɒ | pluja | pluya/plevita | lluvia | lluvia | chuva | choiva |
land | terram | tèrra | țară | terra tɛˈrːa | terra tɛrːə | terra | terra tɛrːa | tèra ˈtɛra | tæra tɛɾa | tera | terra ˈtɛɾɐ | tèra ˈtɛɾɐ | tiere | terra/tiara | tèrra | terre | tèrra ˈtɛʁːɒ | terra | tierra | tierra | tierra | terra | terra |
stone | petra | pedra | piatră | petra ˈpεtra | preta ˈpɾɛtə | petra | pietra pi̯etra | piera ˈpi̯ɛra~ˈpi̯era; prïa~prèa ˈpri.a~ˈprɛ.a | pria pɾi̯a | preda | preda/preja | pera/pria/preja | piere | crapa | piérra | pierre | pèira ˈpɛi̯ʁɒ | pedra | piedra | piedra | piedra | pedra | pedra |
sky | caelum | chélu | cer | celu ˈtʃɛlʊ | cielo ˈtʃi̯elə | celu | cielo ˈtʃ(i̯)ɛlo | çiél ˈsi̯el~ˈtsi̯el ~ çiélo ˈθi̯elo | çê se | cēl | cel ˈtɕel | cel/sel ˈtɕel / ˈsel | cîl | tschiel ˈtʃ̯i̯ɛl | cièl | ciel | cèl sɛl | cel | cielo | ciel(o) | cielu | céu | ceo |
high | altum | àrtu | înalt | autu ˈawɾʊ | auto ɑu̯tə | altu | alto ˈalto | alto ˈalto | ato atu | élt | alt/(v)olt | àut ˈɑʊ̯t | alt | aut ˈɑʊ̯t | hiôt | hautInitial h- due to contamination of Germanic *hauh "high". Although no longer pronounced, it reveals its former presence by inhibiting elision of a preceding schwa, e.g. le haut "the high" vs. l'eau "the water". | naut nau̯t | alt | alto | alto | altu | alto | alto |
new | novum | nóbu | nou | novu ˈnɔvʊ | nuovo ˈnu̯ovə | novu | nuovo ˈnu̯ɔvo | nóvo ˈnovo | nêuvo nø̯u | noeuv | nœv ˈnøf | neuv ˈnø̯w | gnove | nov ˈnøf | nôvo, nôf | neuf | nòu nɔu̯ | nou | nuevo | nuevo | nuevu | novo | novo |
horse | caballum | càdhu | cal | cavaḍḍu kaˈvaɖɖʊ | cavallo cɐvɑlːə | cavallu | cavallo kavalːo | cavało kaˈvae̯o caval kaˈval | cavàllo | cavàl | cavall | caval kaˈvɑl | cjaval | chaval ˈtʃ̯aval | chevâl | cheval | caval kaˈβal | cavall | caballo | caballo | caballu | cavalo | cabalo |
dog | canem | càne/jàgaru | câine | cani ˈkanɪ | cane/cacciuttiello | cane | cane kane | can ˈkaŋ | càn kaŋ | can | can/ca ˈkɑ̃(ŋ) | can ˈkaŋ | cjan | chaun ˈtʃ̯awn | chin | chien | can ka / gos gus | ca, gos | can | can/perro | can | cão | can |
do | facere | fàchere | face(re) | fàciri ˈfaʃɪɾɪ | fà fɑ | fà | fare ˈfaɾe | far ˈfar | fâ faː | far / fer | far ˈfɑ | fé ˈfe | fâ | far far | fére, fâr | faire | far fa | fer | fer | hacer | facer | fazer | facer |
milk | lactem | làte | lapte | latti ˈlatːɪ | latte ˈlɑtːə | latte | latte ˈlatːe | late ˈlate | læte ˈlɛːte / laite lai̯te | latt | lacc/lat ˈlɑtɕ | làit/lacc ˈlɑi̯t / ˈlɑtɕ | lat | latg ˈlɑtɕ | lacél, lat | lait | lach lat͡ʃ / lat͡s | llet | leit | leche | lleche | leite | leite |
eye | oculum > *oclum | ócru | ochi | occhiu ˈɔkːi̯ʊ | uocchio uokːi̯ə | ochiu/ochju | occhio ˈɔkːi̯o | òcio ˈɔtʃo | éugio ˈødʒu | òć | œgg ˈøtɕ | euj/eugg ˈøj / ødʑ | voli | egl | uely | œil | uèlh y̯ɛl | ull | uello/ollo | ojo | güeyu | olho | ollo |
ear | auriculam > *oriclam | orícra | ureche | auricchia awˈɾɪkːɪ̯a | recchia ɾekːi̯ə | orecchiu/orechju | orecchio oˡɾekːjo | récia ˈretʃa; orécia ˈoɾetʃa | oêgia | uréć | oregia/orecia ʊˈɾɛd͡ʑɐ | orija ʊˈɾiɐ̯ / oregia ʊˈɾed͡ʑɐ | orele | ureglia | orelye | oreille | aurelha au̯ˈʁɛʎɒ | orella | orella | oreja | oreya | orelha | orella |
tongue/ language | linguam | límba | limbă | lingua lingu̯a | lengua | lingua | lingua ˈliŋɡua | léngua ˈleŋgu̯a | léngoa leŋgu̯a | léngua | lengua lẽgwɐ | lenga ˈlɛŋɡa | lenghe | lingua | lengoua | langue | lenga ˈlɛŋgɒ | llengua | luenga | lengua | llingua | língua | lingua |
hand | manum | mànu | mână | manu manʊ | mana ˈmɑnə | manu | mano mano | man ˈmaŋ | màn maŋ | man | man/ma mɑ̃(ɲ) | man ˈmaŋ | man | maun | man | main | man ma | mà | man | mano | mano | mão | man |
skin | pellem | pèdhe | piele | peḍḍi pεdːɪ | pella pɛlːə | pelle | pelle ˈpɛlːe | pèłe ˈpɛ.e~ˈpɛle; pèl ˈpɛl | pélle pele | pèl | pell pɛl | pèil ˈpɛi̯l | piel | pel | pêl | peau | pèl pɛl | pell | piel | piel | piel | pele | pel |
I | ego | (d)ègo | eu | eu/jè/ju/iu | ije ijə | eiu | io | (mi)Cognate with Latin mē, not ego. This parallels the state of affairs in Celtic, where the cognate of ego is not attested anywhere, and the use of the accusative form cognate to mē has been extended to cover the nominative, as well. a | (mi) a | (mì/mè) a | (mi/mé) a | (mi) i/a/e | jo | jau | je | je , moi | ieu i̯ɛu̯ | jo | yo | yo | yo | eu | eu |
our | nostrum | nóstru | nostru | nostru ˈnɔstrʊ | nuosto nu̯oʃtə | nostru | nostro | nòstro ˈnɔstro | nòstro ˈnɔstɾu | nòster | nòst/nòster ˈnɔst(ɐr) | nòst ˈnɔst | nestri | noss | noutron | notre | nòstre ˈnɔstʁe | nostre | nuestro | nuestro | nuesu,Developed from an assimilated form * nossum rather than from nostrum. nuestru | nosso | noso |
three | trēs | tres | trei | tri ˈtɹɪ | tre trɛ | tre | tre tre | trí~trè ˈtri~ˈtrɛ | tréi (m)/træ (f) | trii | tri (m)/ tre (f) | trè ˈtɾɛ | tre | trais | trê | trois | tres tʁɛs | tres | tres | tres | trés | três | tres |
four | quattuor > *quattro | bàtoro | patru | quattru ˈku̯aʈɻʊ | quatto qu̯ɑtːə | quattru | quattro | quatro~qoatro ˈku̯a.tro~ˈkoa.tro | quàttro ˈkuatɾu | quàtar | quàter ˈkwɑtɐr | quatr ˈkɑt | cuatri | quat(t)er | quatro | quatre | quatre ˈkatʁe | quatre | cuatre, cuatro | cuatro | cuatro | quatro | catro |
five | quīnque > *cīnque | chímbe | cinci | cincu ˈtʃɪnkʊ | cinco tʃinɡə | cinque | cinque ˈtʃinku̯e | çinque ˈsiŋku̯e~ˈtsiŋku̯e~ˈθiŋku̯e; çinqoe ˈsiŋkoe | çìnque ˈsiŋku̯e | sinc | cinc ʃĩk | sinch ˈsiŋk | cinc | tschintg ˈtʃink | cinq | cinq | cinc siŋk | cinc | cinc(o) | cinco | cinco, cincu | cinco | cinco |
six | sex | ses | șase | sia ˈsi̯a | seje sɛjə | sei | sei ˈsɛ̯j | sïe~sié ˈsi.e~ˈsi̯e | sêi se̯j | siē | sex ses | ses ˈses | sîs | sis | siéx | six | sièis si̯ɛi̯s | sis | seis/sais | seis | seis | seis | seis |
seven | septem | sète | șapte | setti ˈsɛtːɪ | sette ˈsɛtːə | sette | sette ˈsɛtːe | sète ˈsɛte; sèt ˈsɛt | sètte ˈsɛte | sèt | set sɛt | set ˈsɛt | siet | se(a)t, siat si̯ɛt | sèpt | sept | sèt sɛt | set | siet(e) | siete | siete | sete | sete |
eight | octō | òto | opt | ottu ˈɔtːʊ | otto otːə | ottu | otto ˈɔtːo | òto ɔto | éuto ˈøtu | òt | vòt/òt vɔt | eut ˈøt | vot | ot(g), och ˈɔtɕ | huét | huit | uèch/uèit y̯ɛt͡ʃ/y̯ɛi̯t | vuit | ueit(o) | ocho | ocho | oito | oito |
nine | novem | nòbe | nouă | novi ˈnɔvɪ | nove novə | nove | nove ˈnɔve | nove nɔve~nove | nêuve nø̯e | nóv | nœv nøf | neuv ˈnøw | nûv | no(u)v | nôf | neuf | nòu nɔu̯ | nou | nueu | nueve | nueve | nove | nove |
ten | decem | dèche | zece | deci ˈɾεʃɪ | diece d̯i̯eʃə | dece | dieci ˈdi̯etʃi | diéxe di̯eze; diés di̯es | dêxe ˈdeʒe | déś | dex des | des ˈdes | dîs | diesch di̯eʃ | diéx | dix | dètz dɛt͡s | deu | diez | diez | diez | dez | dez |
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