Sound laws · Law 17 · Clusters

C'L inside a word

-C(U)L-, -T(U)L- (after syncope)

Spanish

j [x]

French

il, ill [j]

Italian

cchi [kkj]

Portuguese

lh [ʎ]

Romanian

chi, che [kʲ]

Catalan

ll [ʎ]

What happened

Spoken Latin dropped the unstressed vowel in endings like -ULUM, creating a cluster CL (OCULUM → *oclu); TL joined it as CL (the Appendix Probi warns 'VETULUS, not VECLUS'). Italian turned the l into a glide and kept the k (doubled): cchi; Romanian did the same with a single k: ochi, ureche. Spanish, French, Portuguese and Catalan treated cl like LI: a palatal [ʎ] that Portuguese (lh) and Catalan (ll) keep, French reduced to [j] and Spanish pushed back to [x].

Examples

Latin	Italian	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Romanian	Catalan	English relative
OCULUM‘eye’	occhio	ojo	œil	olho	ochi	ull	ocular
AURICULAM (VL ORICLA)‘ear’	orecchio	oreja	oreille	orelha	ureche	orella	auricular
VETULAM (VL VECLA)‘old (fem.)’	vecchia	vieja	vieille	velha	veche	vella
GENUCULUM‘knee (es hinojo, archaic)’	ginocchio	hinojo	genou	joelho	genunchi	genoll
SPECULUM‘mirror’	specchio	espejo	—	espelho	—	espill

Decoder

Spanish -ejo/-eja and -ojo, French -eil/-eille, Italian -cchio/-cchia, Portuguese -lho/-lha, Catalan -ll/-lla, Romanian -chi/-che: ojo, œil, occhio, olho, ull, ochi. English learned words show -cul-: ocular, auricular.

Exceptions

Learned words keep -culo, -cle, -colo: ocular, espectáculo, vehículo; oculaire, spectacle; oculare, spettacolo. Where the vowel dropped late or not at all, there is no palatal: TĒGULAM gives Spanish teja (its G'L treated like C'L), but Italian tegola and French tuile. Spanish says rodilla for knee today; hinojo survives in de hinojos 'kneeling'.

Watch it happen: OCULUM

What happened

Examples

Decoder

Exceptions

In your word bank