Aller au contenu

Lois phonétiques · Loi 1 · Voyelles

Stressed short E breaks into ie

Ĕ (stressed)

Les explications sont pour l’instant en anglais ; les exemples sont dans toutes les langues.

Espagnol

ie (open and closed syllables)

Français

ie, i (open syllable); e (closed)

Italien

ie (open syllable); e (closed)

Portugais

e [ɛ] (no diphthong)

Roumain

ie; ia before a or ă (piatră); fused with a preceding d, t (zece, țară)

Catalan

e [ɛ] (no diphthong); i next to a palatal (llit)

Ce qui s’est passé

Latin short Ĕ became an open [ɛ] in spoken Latin, and under stress it stretched and split into a glide plus vowel, ie. Spanish diphthongized it in every stressed syllable, open or closed; Italian and French only where the syllable ended in the vowel (an open syllable), keeping plain e before a consonant cluster. In French, ie was later often reduced to i, especially next to a palatal sound. Romanian broke it everywhere, like Spanish, then reshaped ie to ia before a following a or ă and merged the glide into a preceding d or t (zece, țară); Portuguese and Catalan never diphthongized it and keep an open [ɛ] (pé, pedra; peu, pedra).

Exemples

LatinItalienEspagnolFrançaisPortugaisRoumainCatalanParent anglais
PETRAM‘stone’pietrapiedrapierrepedrapiatrăpedra
PEDEM‘foot’piedepiepiedpé—peupedal
MEL‘honey’mielemielmielmelmieremel
FERRUM‘iron (closed syllable)’ferrohierroferferrofierferroferrous
DECEM‘ten’diecidiezdixdezzecedeudecimal
TERRAM‘earth, land’terratierraterreterrațarăterraterrain
TEMPUS‘time’tempotiempotempstempotimptempstemporal

Clé de lecture

Spanish or Romanian ie in a stressed syllable usually answers to plain e in a sister: tierra, fier → terre, terra, ferro. Italian ie points to Spanish ie too, and to French ie or i (piede, pie, pied; dieci, diez, dix); Portuguese and Catalan simply have e (pé, peu).

Exceptions

A following yod blocks the diphthong in Spanish (LECTUM → lecho, beside French lit and Italian letto) and raises the vowel to i in Catalan (llit), and Spanish ie shrank to i before a palatal (CASTELLUM → castiello → castillo). Italian has holdouts like bene (Spanish bien), usually put down to its frequent unstressed use; Romanian raised e to i before a nasal (timp). Learned words never diphthongize (pedal, terreno, temporal).

Voir la transformation: PEDEM

Dans votre lexique