Leggi fonetiche · Legge 29 · Consonanti
Single L between vowels: lost in Portuguese, r in Romanian
-L- (single, between vowels)
Per ora le spiegazioni sono in inglese; gli esempi sono in tutte le lingue.
Spagnolo
l kept
Francese
l kept
Italiano
l kept
Portoghese
lost (céu, fio, cor)
Rumeno
r (cer, fir, sare)
Catalano
l kept
Cosa è successo
A single l between vowels is stable in Spanish, French, Italian and Catalan, but the two sisters at the edges of the Romance world both reworked it. Portuguese (with Galician) lost it in the early Middle Ages, often leaving two vowels side by side that later merged (DOLŌREM → door → dor, MOLAM → mó). Romanian turned it into r (rhotacism): CAELUM → cer, FĪLUM → fir; Slavic words borrowed later keep their l (milă), so the change is older than Slavic contact. Double LL was spared in both and simplified into a new single l (CABALLUM → cavalo, cal).
Esempi
| Latino | Italiano | Spagnolo | Francese | Portoghese | Rumeno | Catalano | Parente inglese |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FĪLUM‘thread’ | filo | hilo | fil | fio | fir | fil | filament |
| CAELUM‘sky’ | cielo | cielo | ciel | céu | cer | cel | celestial |
| MOLAM‘millstone (ro moară 'mill')’ | mola | muela | meule | mó | moară | mola | |
| SALĪRE‘to jump (es 'go out', it 'climb', pt 'go out')’ | salire | salir | saillir | sair | sări | — | |
| COLŌREM‘colour’ | colore | color | couleur | cor | — | color | colour |
| VOLĀRE‘to fly’ | volare | volar | voler | voar | — | volar | |
| SALEM‘salt (l final in pt, kept)’ | sale | sal | sel | sal | sare | sal | saline |
Chiave di decodifica
A short Portuguese word with a vowel clash where the sisters have -l-? Put the l back: céu → cielo, cel; cor → color; voar → volar. A Romanian r between vowels may be an l elsewhere: cer, fir, sare → cielo, filo, sal.
Eccezioni
Portuguese kept an l that ended up word-final (sal, mel), but loses it again in the plural, where a vowel follows: sais, méis. Learned and later words keep l in both languages (Portuguese calor, celeste; Romanian milă, a Slavic loan). Old Romanian texts and some northern dialects also turned single n into r, but the standard kept n.