Classical Latin and the major Romance Languages: diphthongization patterns

Classical Latin and the major Romance Languages: diphthongization patterns

Diphthongs occur when two vowels which follow each other are pronounced separately; if there are three vowels then it's a triphthong. The table below features all of the major Romance languages, Classical and vulgar Latin's vowels (vulgar Latin, by the way, was the spoken successor to Classical Latin. Let's take a look at what happened to Classical Latin's monosyllables:

Classical Latin	Vulgar Latin	Castilian	Catalan	Portuguese	Italian	French	Rumanian	Classical Latin
Ĕ & AE (1)	ę	piedra	pedra	pedra	pietra	pierre	piatra	PĔTRA
		hiel	fel	fel	fiele	fiel	fiere	FĔLE
		miel	mel	mel	miele	miel	miere	MĔLE
		pie		pe	piede	pie		PĚDE
Ŏ (2)	o˛	muere	mor	morre	muore	meurt	moare	MŎRIT
		puede	pot	pode	puote	peut	poate	PŎTET
		rueda	roda	roda	ruota	ruede (roue)	roata	RŎTA
Ĕ & AE (3)	ę/	hierba	herba	erva	erba	herbe	iarba	HĔRBA
		siete	set	sete	sette	sept	sapte	SĔPTE
		hierro	ferro	ferro	ferro	fer	fier	FĔRRU
Ŏ (4)	o˛/	duerme	dorm	dorme	dorme	dort	doarme	DŎRMIT
		fuerte	fort	forte	forte	fort	foarte	FŎRTE
		cuesta	costa	costa	costa	coste (côte)	coasta	CŎSTA

Latin	Spanish	Portuguese	French	Italian
FOCU	fuego	fogo	feu	fuoco
NOVU	nuevo	novo	neuf	nuovo
OVU	huevo	ovo	oeuf	uovo

Tonic (stressed) Classical Latin vowels tend to go one of three ways:

1. In Catalan and Portuguese there is no diphthongization.

2. In Spanish and Rumanian there is always a diphthong.

3. In French and Italian, diphthongization is limited to open syllables (ie those without a final consonant, or coda.)

Here's how diphthongization actually happened:

o˛ > ó˛ó˛ > ọ́ó˛> úo˛ - úa - úe

wó˛ - wá -wé

ę > é˛é˛ > ẹ́é˛ > íe - ía

jé - já

If you don´t like the look of the above, then here´s what happened in words: the short o or e of vulgar Latin was drawn out, and then subsequently the first half of the phoneme closed, with the effect that stress shifted to the second et alors voilà! we have a rising diphthong.

You'll notice that we've cited Old French in the above table in two examples. Here's a closer look at what happened in France:

C.L. MENSEM > O.F meis > French mois

In French, /ε/ became [e] when followed by a nasal and -en [ẽ] > [ã] but as far as the above example goes, the Gallic route to the modern oi diphthong went something like this:

[-óe] > [-oé] > [we-] > [-wa-]

The oi sound (oy) in English is only exceptionally present in Modern French as oï. The [-wa-] sound, incidentally is increasingly pronounced wo regionally across much of northern France, due partially to the influence of popular youth culture, which often emulates the pronunciation of ethnic minority groups in Paris.

Before moving on, let's take a look at what happened to MENSEM (nominative MES) in the adjacent post-classical vulgar vernacular:

Span Ital

mes mese

cf also, month (Eng), Monat (Ger) and maand (Dutch).

French scholars have sometimes confused things a little for us when it comes to French historical phonology. An example of this is the French word for weight, poids.

Poids comes from the Classical Latin PENUM, which turned into pesu in vulgar Latin (cf modern Spanish and Italian peso). The diphthongisation makes sense, sure enough but where did the d come from? The answer lies in Renaissance reform, where the Old French pois was considered a vulgarisation by boffins who thought the word came from Classical Latin PONDUS. They were quite wrong, and not surprisingly, the d they inserted has always been ignored in speech.