Morph lab
Fifteen centuries in a few seconds.
Every Romance word here began as the same spoken Latin. Press play and watch it travel: the sounds that survive stay put, the ones that change fade in, and each step names the sound law behind it. Six branches, one root — the sisters' family tree, one word at a time.
Pick a word
OCULUM
‘eye’
Classical Latin accusative
Classical Latin accusative
Classical Latin accusative
Classical Latin accusative
Classical Latin accusative
Classical Latin accusative
Spoken Latin squeezed OCULUM to oclu; then each sister softened the cl its own way: Spanish pushed it to the back of the throat, French dissolved it into a glide, Italian doubled the k and kept a y, Portuguese and Catalan stopped at the palatal l (olho, ull), and Romanian kept only a softened k (ochi).
Forms are written in IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet: one symbol, one sound. Stressed syllables carry ˈ. Dates are approximate and given only where the handbooks agree. 24 word journeys.