Sound laws · Law 30 · Consonants

Portuguese loses single N between vowels

-N- (single, between vowels)

Spanish

n kept

French

n kept between vowels; at the end, a nasal vowel

Italian

n kept

Portuguese

lost, nasalizing the vowel (lã, mão); later often oral (lua, boa) or nh (vinho)

Romanian

n kept; a before it raised to â (lână, mână)

Catalan

n kept; lost where it became final (mà; see final-n)

What happened

In the same period that it dropped -l-, Portuguese (with Galician) dropped a single n between vowels, but not before passing its nasality to the vowel in front: LĀNAM → lã, MANUM → mão. Where a back vowel followed, the nasal vowel often merged with it and lost its nasality (LŪNAM → lũa → lua, BONAM → boa, CORŌNAM → coroa); after i the nasal resurfaced as a palatal nh (VĪNUM → vĩo → vinho). The other sisters keep n between vowels; Romanian raised the vowel before it (lână, mână), and Catalan lost it only where it ended up at the end of the word.

Examples

Latin	Italian	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Romanian	Catalan	English relative
LĀNAM‘wool’	lana	lana	laine	lã	lână	llana
MANUM‘hand’	mano	mano	main	mão	mână	mà	manual
LŪNAM‘moon’	luna	luna	lune	lua	lună	lluna	lunar
BONAM‘good (fem.)’	buona	buena	bonne	boa	bună	bona
CORŌNAM‘crown (ro cunună 'wreath')’	corona	corona	couronne	coroa	cunună	corona	crown
TENĒRE‘to hold → to have’	tenere	tener	tenir	ter	ține	tenir
VĪNUM‘wine’	vino	vino	vin	vinho	vin	vi

Decoder

A Portuguese tilde (ã, õ) or a hiatus like -oa, -ua often hides a lost n: mão → mano, mână; lã → lana; coroa → corona. Portuguese -inho can be plain -ino elsewhere: vinho → vino.

Exceptions

Portuguese learned words keep n (lunar, coronário, manual), and so do words where the n was double in Latin (ANNUM → ano, PANNUM → pano), since NN simplified only after the loss. The masculine of 'good' kept its nasal vowel at the end of the word: bom beside boa.