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Sound laws · Law 21 · Clusters

French loses S before a consonant (^)

S + consonant (inside a word)

Spanish

s kept

French

s lost; often marked ^ (ê â ô î û)

Italian

s kept

Portuguese

s kept

Romanian

s kept

Catalan

s kept

What happened

In medieval French, s before a consonant weakened and disappeared, often lengthening the vowel before it; the other five sisters kept the s. Scribes kept writing the s for centuries, and when spelling was modernized in the 18th century the circumflex accent replaced it in many words. English, which borrowed from French before the loss, still has the s.

Examples

LatinItalianSpanishFrenchPortugueseRomanianCatalanEnglish relative
FESTAM‘feast day’festafiestafêtefesta—festafeast
COSTAM‘rib → side, coast’costacostacôtecostacoastăcostacoast
HOSPITEM‘guest, host’ospitehuéspedhôtehóspedeoaspetehostehost
CASTELLUM‘fort → castle’castellocastillochâteaucastelo—castellcastle
CRUSTAM‘crust’crostacostracroûtecrosta—crostacrust
INSULAM‘island’isolaislaîleilha—illaisle

Decoder

French ê, â, ô, î, û? Put an s after the vowel to get the word in the other sisters (and often English): fête → fiesta, festa, feast; côte → costa, coastă, coast.

Exceptions

The circumflex also marks other lost sounds (âge from Old French aage, sûr from seür) and tells homographs apart (du/dû, sur/sûr); since the 1990 reform it is optional on i and u in most words. Later learned words and loans keep the s: fête but festival (from English), hôpital but hospitalier. Catalan illa (and Portuguese ilha, probably taken from Catalan or Occitan) lost the s by another road: the cluster s'l became a palatal ll.

Watch it happen: SPATHAM

In your word bank