Sound Correspondences I
In a way, the Romance languages are all mispronounced Latin. Comparing the Romance languages, then, is looking at the different ways they mispronounced it. Historical linguists and phoneticists spend hours, even days and months, poring over charts showing where these sound changes came from and how they operate. Aren't you glad you're not them? If you are, here's a quick and dirty look at what arises from all their hard work - a cheat sheet for guessing / jogging your memory when you remember a word in one language but not another:
| English | (Latin) | Spanish | French | Italian |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -ct- | -ch- | -it | -tt | |
| milk | lacte | leche | lait | latte |
| eight | octo | ocho | huit | otto |
| f- | h- | f- | f- | |
| fact | facto | hecho | fait | fatto |
| hunger | fame | hambre | faim | fame |
| -li- | -j- | -ill- | -gl- | |
| leaf | folia | hoja | feuille | foglia |
| daughter | filia | hija | fille | figlia |
| c- | c- | ch- | c- | |
| horse | caballo | caballo | cheval | cavallo |
| c- | g- | ch- | g- | |
| cat | catto | gato | chat | gato |
| st- | est- | ét- | st- | |
| narrow | stricto | estrecho | étroit | stretto |
| student | studente | estudiante | étudiant | studente |
Bear in mind that this table does not show laws, but tendencies. Knowing it will not allow you to learn one language and automatically know the vocabulary for the other two. But a familiarity with it will help you connect words that might otherwise seem unrelated, making your learning easier and making the different languages seem... not so different. There will be more tables like this to come. Many more. If you were to try to memorize them all, you'd go mad. But if you read through now and again, letting the connections sink in, you'll find the task of learning three languages much easier.
Note that this table usually shows the ablative form of the Latin word, be it classical or late Latin. This is not the form you find in dictionaries but it was the most commonly used form, which is why so many Spanish and Italian words end in -o, -a or -e. As for French endings - and even the vowels in the middle - there's not much to be said except that the French mumble unless they're speaking forcefully, which leads to a slurring of vowels with all sorts of bothersome consequences for the language student. We'll talk about dealing with this in later "Sound Correspondences" lessons.
