Features
Rhaeto-Romance is distinguished by a number of features which separate it from its neighbors.
- diphthongization of Vulgar Latin open e into ei, closed e into ie
- Latin pede → Rom. (Surselvan) pei "foot", Lad pl. piesc "feet"
- Latin festa → Rom. (Surselvan) fiasta, Friul fieste "party, feast"
- occasional change of stressed a to e, particularly after a palatalized velar
- fronting of long ū in all stages ui → ü → i
- Latin plūs "more" → Friul plui : Lad plü, Rom (Engadine) plü : Rom (other dialects) pli
- loss of final vowels except -a, which often weakens to -e (in Friulian there is also a feminine plural in -is)
- Rom. saira, Lad sëra, Friul sere "evening"
- Rom. festa, Lad festa, Friul fieste "party"
- Friul pie, pia (pious, f.) "press"
- general palatalization of the ca and ga groups
- Lad ciampana, Friul čhampane "bell"
- preserved cl-, pl-, fl-; preserved Germanic w
- Latin clāvem → Rom clav/clev, Lad (Fascian, Fodom) kle(f), Friul clâv "key"
- Lat plēbs → Rom plaiv "parish", Lad plief "parish", Friul plêv "parish church"
- Lat flātus → Rom flad, Lad fle, fla, Friul flât "breath"
- Gothic werra → Rom (Surselvan) uiara, (Sutselvan) veara, Lad vera, Friul vuere "war"
- voicing of intervocalic unvoiced consonants
- loss of intervocalic voiced consonants
- preserved final -s leading to a single case based on an obsolete oblique which combined different endings from non-nominative cases; formerly a double case system.
- Rom sunàis "you ring" (< sonās)
- Rom culinis "hills" (< *collinīs, dative)
- Rom bels ölgs "beautiful eyes" (< *bellos oculos, accusative)
Read more about this topic: Rhaeto-Romance Languages
Famous quotes containing the word features:
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Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)