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Leggi fonetiche · Legge 6 · Vocali

French vowel + nasal becomes a nasal vowel

vowel + N/M (same syllable)

Per ora le spiegazioni sono in inglese; gli esempi sono in tutte le lingue.

Spagnolo

vowel + n kept

Francese

nasal vowel (ɑ̃ ɔ̃ ɛ̃); n/m silent

Italiano

vowel + n kept

Portoghese

nasal vowel or diphthong too (pão, bom, fim)

Rumeno

vowel + n kept; vowel raised before n (pâine, mână, timp)

Catalano

oral vowel; final n after the stress lost (pa, vi)

Cosa è successo

In medieval French, a vowel followed by n or m in the same syllable let air escape through the nose, and the nasal consonant itself faded away, leaving a nasal vowel. Where the nasal stood before a pronounced vowel, the vowel was nasalized too at first, but early modern French undid this: bonne, femme are said with an oral vowel and a real n or m. Portuguese nasalized on its own and went further, even between vowels (see intervocalic-n): pão, bom, fim. Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Catalan never nasalized; Romanian raised the vowel before n instead (pâine, mână), and Catalan dropped a word-final n (pa, vi; see final-n).

Esempi

LatinoItalianoSpagnoloFrancesePortogheseRumenoCatalanoParente inglese
PĀNEM‘bread’panepanpainpãopâinepa
VĪNUM‘wine’vinovinovinvinhovinvi
BONUM‘good’buonobuenobonbombunbobonus
MANUM‘hand’manomanomainmãomânămàmanual
ŪNUM‘one’unounounumunununit
FĪNEM‘end’finefinfinfim—fifinal
TEMPUS‘time’tempotiempotempstempotimptempstemporal

Chiave di decodifica

A French or Portuguese nasal vowel spelled with n, m or a tilde stands for Spanish, Italian and Romanian vowel + n: pain, pão → pan, pane, pâine; vin → vino, vin. Catalan usually has the bare vowel: pa, vi.

Eccezioni

The feminine keeps a real consonant because a vowel followed: BONAM → buena, bonne [bɔn], buona, bună, bona; ŪNAM → una, une, una. Portuguese is the exception there: it lost the n between vowels too, so the feminine is boa beside masculine bom. Spelling hides the merger of in, ain, ein, un into one vowel [ɛ̃] in Parisian French.

Guardala in azione: PLĒNUM

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