Sound laws · Law 1 · Vowels

Stressed short E breaks into ie

Ĕ (stressed)

Spanish

ie (open and closed syllables)

French

ie, i (open syllable); e (closed)

Italian

ie (open syllable); e (closed)

Portuguese

e [ɛ] (no diphthong)

Romanian

ie; ia before a or ă (piatră); fused with a preceding d, t (zece, țară)

Catalan

e [ɛ] (no diphthong); i next to a palatal (llit)

What happened

Latin short Ĕ became an open [ɛ] in spoken Latin, and under stress it stretched and split into a glide plus vowel, ie. Spanish diphthongized it in every stressed syllable, open or closed; Italian and French only where the syllable ended in the vowel (an open syllable), keeping plain e before a consonant cluster. In French, ie was later often reduced to i, especially next to a palatal sound. Romanian broke it everywhere, like Spanish, then reshaped ie to ia before a following a or ă and merged the glide into a preceding d or t (zece, țară); Portuguese and Catalan never diphthongized it and keep an open [ɛ] (pé, pedra; peu, pedra).

Examples

Latin	Italian	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Romanian	Catalan	English relative
PETRAM‘stone’	pietra	piedra	pierre	pedra	piatră	pedra
PEDEM‘foot’	piede	pie	pied	pé	—	peu	pedal
MEL‘honey’	miele	miel	miel	mel	miere	mel
FERRUM‘iron (closed syllable)’	ferro	hierro	fer	ferro	fier	ferro	ferrous
DECEM‘ten’	dieci	diez	dix	dez	zece	deu	decimal
TERRAM‘earth, land’	terra	tierra	terre	terra	țară	terra	terrain
TEMPUS‘time’	tempo	tiempo	temps	tempo	timp	temps	temporal

Decoder

Spanish or Romanian ie in a stressed syllable usually answers to plain e in a sister: tierra, fier → terre, terra, ferro. Italian ie points to Spanish ie too, and to French ie or i (piede, pie, pied; dieci, diez, dix); Portuguese and Catalan simply have e (pé, peu).

Exceptions

A following yod blocks the diphthong in Spanish (LECTUM → lecho, beside French lit and Italian letto) and raises the vowel to i in Catalan (llit), and Spanish ie shrank to i before a palatal (CASTELLUM → castiello → castillo). Italian has holdouts like bene (Spanish bien), usually put down to its frequent unstressed use; Romanian raised e to i before a nasal (timp). Learned words never diphthongize (pedal, terreno, temporal).

Watch it happen: PEDEM

What happened

Examples

Decoder

Exceptions

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