# Latin CL to Spanish LL



## Beachxhair

How did Spanish _ll _in words like _llamar, llave _evolve from the Latin _cl _of _clamare _and _clavis? _​


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## merquiades

The /k/ moves its point of articulation forward to match the /l/ and the whole cluster is then palatalized into /ʎ/, now often simplified to /ʝ/.  The same thing occurs in Portuguese but the result is /ʧ/ then simplified to /ʃ/:  chamar, chaves.


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## bibax

Oddly, French and Italian maintain the /k/: clef, chiave, chiamare.


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## jmx

There is an area between Aragon and Catalonia where the initial groups of consonant + 'l' have evolved to consonant + /ʎ/, for example, 'cllau' [kʎau] (Spanish 'llave', Catalan 'clau']. It has been suggested that this pronunciation could have existed in the past in Spanish as an intermediate change.


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## Beachxhair

jmx said:


> There is an area between Aragon and Catalonia where the initial groups of consonant + 'l' have evolved to consonant + /ʎ/, for example, 'cllau' [kʎau] (Spanish 'llave', Catalan 'clau']. It has been suggested that this pronunciation could have existed in the past in Spanish as an intermediate change.


That's really interesting. Are there any articles written about this, or any linguists who have studied and commented on it?


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## aefrizzo

bibax said:


> Oddly, French and Italian maintain the /k/: clef, chiave, chiamare.


This holds for standard Italian only.Venetian, Tuscan and Sicilian dialects (the latter just in a small area near Agrigento) adopt the /tʃ/ phoneme. Namely not kiave, kiesa, kiamare  but * tʃiave, tʃiesa**,** tʃiamare*. (key, church, call).


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## jmx

Beachxhair said:


> That's really interesting. Are there any articles written about this, or any linguists who have studied and commented on it?


Lots of linguists have studied this, beginning with Menéndez Pidal himself. Search for 'dialecto ribagorzano' in internet.


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## Nino83

aefrizzo said:


> This holds for standard Italian only.Venetian, Tuscan and Sicilian dialects (the latter just in a small area near Agrigento) adopt the /tʃ/ phoneme. Namely not kiave, kiesa, kiamare  but * tʃiave, tʃiesa**,** tʃiamare*. (key, church, call).



Eastern Sicilian has [g] instead of [k]: ghiavi [giavi], ghiamari [giamari].


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## Outsider

bibax said:


> Oddly, French and Italian maintain the /k/: clef, chiave, chiamare.


But not the /l/ in Italian, so even there the cluster /kl/ must have been palatalized at some stage.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> But not the /l/ in Italian, so even there the cluster /kl/ must have been palatalized at some stage.


In Italian, /l/ itself is palatalized in a consunant cluster (blancum>bianco, planum>piano, flumen>fiume, etc). It is not the /k/ or the cluster /kl/ that is palatalized.


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## Outsider

Did that happen in general to consonant + l clusters? I had never realised!...


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## merquiades

Outsider said:


> But not the /l/ in Italian, so even there the cluster /kl/ must have been palatalized at some stage.



Hi Outsider.  I suspect there is something different happening in Italian since /l/ is lost completely after whatever consonant, and pretty much consistently:  Chiaro, ghiaccio, piacere, piazza, spiaggia, bianco, fianco, fiore

Edit:  Just saw Berndf's comment.  Was the /l/ to /i/ palatalization?  The liquid consonants changed to a vowel.


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## bibax

Outsider said:


> Did that happen in general to consonant + l clusters? I had never realised!...


Probably yes with some exception like gloria, glossa, ... (but ghiaccio < glacium, ghiandola < glandula, ...).


merquiades said:


> ... Edit:  Just saw Berndf's comment.  Was the /l/ to /i/ palatalization?  The liquid consonants changed to a vowel.


Is it a vowel or rather a semivowel?


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## merquiades

bibax said:


> Probably yes with some exception like gloria, glossa, ... (but ghiaccio < glacium, ghiandola < glandula, ...).
> 
> Is it a vowel or rather a semivowel?



Hi Bibax.  Words like _gloria_ and _glossa_ are probably Latin cultisms that were added at a later date by the Catholic church.  Otherwise we might have had *ghioria or *ghioia and *ghiossa. 
What puzzles me is a word like _claro_ that is not _llaro_ and _charo_ in Spanish/Portuguese,  unless "clear" is a Latin loanword. 
You are right it would be a semi-vowel /j/ as it always glides into the following vowel.


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## Beachxhair

jmx said:


> Lots of linguists have studied this, beginning with Menéndez Pidal himself. Search for 'dialecto ribagorzano' in internet.


 I searched for 'dialecto ribagorzano', but no linguistic studies/articles came up. Do you have any particular articles you could recommend me? Thanks


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## Nino83

I shouldn't say that /l/ is lost completely after wathever consonant. 
Italian has a lot of words with this cluster. 
These are a few examples. 

*Bl*aterare, *cl*ausura, *fl*agranza, *gl*oria, *pl*ettro, s*pl*endido pa*rl*are, *sl*ancio, a*tl*etico. 

We have ghiaccio and ghiacciato but also glaciale as adjective and fiore as noun and floreale as adjective. 

Ciao


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> I shouldn't say that /l/ is lost completely after wathever consonant.
> Italian has a lot of words with this cluster.  These are a few examples.
> 
> *Bl*aterare, *cl*ausura, *fl*agranza, *gl*oria, *pl*ettro, s*pl*endido pa*rl*are, *sl*ancio, a*tl*etico....


Of course, but all your examples (except of _parlare_) are "parole dotte" (or _cultismos_), not direct contunuations of the corresponding Latin words. 

(Parlare comes from _*parabolare_)


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## jmx

Beachxhair said:


> I searched for 'dialecto ribagorzano', but no linguistic studies/articles came up. Do you have any particular articles you could recommend me? Thanks


I know these studies only indirectly. The Spanish Wikipedia article and its "bibliografía" section should be a good starting point.


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> In Italian, /l/ itself is palatalized in a consunant cluster (blancum>bianco, planum>piano, flumen>fiume, etc). It is not the /k/ or the cluster /kl/ that is palatalized.


I'm afraid that not everybody will agree with me, however I'd like to know the opinion of other foreros ... 

I.e. I've noticed a "slightly" palatal pronounciation even of the double "ll" in (the modern) Italian. This may depend on the concrete region, of course, however I often hear the double "ll" prounounced somewhat patatalized (not exactly as the Spanish "ll", but something between the double "ll" and the double "ʎʎ", e.g. "grillo").


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> Of course, but all your examples (except of _parlare_) are "parole dotte" (or _cultismos_), not direct contunuations of the corresponding Latin words.
> 
> (Parlare comes from _*parabolare_)



I don't agree with this statement. 
_Blaterare_ is a comic way to say that someone is complaining about something. 
_Clausura_ and _plettro_ doesn't have synonyms (we can't say_ monaca di clausura_, i.e nun belonging to an enclosed order, without using _clausura_ and _plettro_ is the only word to say guitar pick), _gloria, splendido__, parlare_ and _atletica_ are the most used words to say glory, gorgeous, to speak, athletics, and _slanci_ is mostly used in sport report. 

Other non erudite words are _bloccare, blindato, cliente, clima, classe, classifica, classico, cliente_ and so on. 



merquiades said:


> Hi Outsider.  I suspect there is something  different happening in Italian since /l/ is lost completely after  whatever consonant, and pretty much consistently:  Chiaro, ghiaccio,  piacere, piazza, spiaggia, bianco, fianco, fiore
> 
> Edit:  Just saw Berndf's comment.  Was the /l/ to /i/ palatalization?  The liquid consonants changed to a vowel.



This statement is not true.


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## Forero

I always thought _Santa Lucia_ was an Italian song. But it struck me that _placida_, a word in the song, begins with _pl-_.

Now I know the song is Neapolitan, not Italian.

Perhaps the other Italian words with such clusters are borrowings from Neapolitan or some other Italic language.

(By the way, _rl_ in _parlare_ is not a cluster since the _r_ and _l_ belong to different syllables. Consonant clusters are groups of consonants that occur together in one syllable.)


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I don't agree with this statement.
> _Blaterare_ is a comic way to say that someone is complaining about something.
> _Clausura_ and _plettro_ doesn't have synonyms (we can't say_ monaca di clausura_, i.e nun belonging to an enclosed order, without using _clausura_ and _plettro_ is the only word to say guitar pick), _gloria, splendido__, parlare_ and _atletica_ are the most used words to say glory, gorgeous, to speak, athletics, and _slanci_ is mostly used in sport report.
> 
> Other non erudite words are _bloccare, blindato, cliente, clima, classe, classifica, classico, cliente_ and so on.
> 
> 
> 
> This statement is not true.



Nino, a cultism does not mean that a given word cannot be highly used today (even be in the top hundred) or that it must necessarily have a highfalutin abstract meaning, it just means that at some time or another the word was retaken from Latin, a dialect or some foreign language, long after native words had already changed /l/ to /j/ and that change had ceased to be active.  That would account for the words you list.


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## Nino83

I agree merquiades but there are also proper nouns as _Claudio, Clara, Clorinda, Flavio_ that have been used from Roman Empire to nowadays and that have not followed that tendency. 

I'm not saying that there wasn't this change (from /l/ to /i/) but that it wasn't so general as this statement (/l/ is lost completely after  whatever consonant) would suggest.


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## bibax

*Clausūra* (< claudere) is clearly a Latin word (more precisely Late Latin).

The corresponding genuine Italian word is *chiusura* (cf. chiudere).

Interestingly chiusura probably also originates from the Late Latin clausura, it is not an independent derivation from the Italian verb chiudere.


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## francisgranada

Forero said:


> ...But it struck me that _placida_, a word in the song, begins with _pl-_.
> 
> Now I know the song is Neapolitan, not Italian.
> 
> Perhaps the other Italian words with such clusters are borrowings from Neapolitan or some other Italic language.


The Neapolitan doesn't maintain these clusters, as well. E.g. chiagnere < plangere (it. piangere), chiù < plus (it più), chiamma < clamat (it. chiama), sciore < flore(m) (it. fiore), ecc ....


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## nwon

We can also take Spanish examples of the cultismo and the real, Latin-derived word to demonstrate: llave but also clave; llano but also plano; another example (without palatalization) would be fábrica and fragua (the former being the Latin loan mean 'factory' and the latter having evolved from the former, eventually meaning something totally distinct and used far less frequently than the latin loan.)


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## olaszinho

I.e. I've noticed a "slightly" palatal pronounciation even of the double "ll" in (the modern) Italian. This may depend on the concrete region, of course, however I often hear the double "ll" prounounced somewhat patatalized (not exactly as the Spanish "ll", but something between the double "ll" and the double "ʎʎ", e.g. "grillo").[/QUOTE]

Sorry Francis, but I have never heard such a sound?! All Spanish variants of  the digraph LL and the pronunciation of the Italian geminate L are completely different sounds to my ear. Italian double LL is never palatalized, except maybe in some obscure dialects.


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## francisgranada

> .... All Spanish variants of  the digraph LL and the pronunciation of the Italian geminate L are completely different sounds to my ear ...


Of course, also to my ears (both)  ... However, independently on Spanish, I have noticed a slight "shift" towards the palatal pronounciation, without affecting the geminate character of the "LL", in some cases in Italian (perhaps when "ll" is preceded by the vowel "i" ??). Maybe it's only my brain that produces this "illusion", that's why I wanted to hear the opinion of other foreros ...                                   

P.S. I've noticed something similar also in my mother tongue, when spoken by some persons from Hungary (I am not able to indentify the region), but not in my surroundings.


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## Nino83

aefrizzo said:


> Ciao,* Francis*.
> Non ci avevo fatto caso sinora, ma qualcosa di simile avviene dalle mie parti con* "igl"*. Ad es."grigliata" , nella conversazione alla svelta, ma non dialettale, diviene "grijata". E nel romanesco, se non sbaglio, sento "fijo mio", spaghetti "all'ajo, ojo e peperoncino".
> Simbolo "j", scusate, non ho familiarità con l'IPA.



In Messina (but not in the province) we have a kind of yeismo  
We say /jj/ for /ʎʎ/ for example in maglietta /maʎʎetta/ in standard Italian and /majjetta/ in Messina. 
But it is considered dialectal.


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## olaszinho

If I'm not mistaken, Francisgranada was talking about something else: palatalization of the geminate L (LL) in words like "illusione" or even "bello". The phenomenon described by Aefrizzo and Nico83 can be found in most Central-Southern Italian dialects.


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## Nino83

olaszinho said:


> If I'm not mistaken, Francisgranada was talking about something else: the palatalization of the geminate L (LL) in words like "illusione" or even "bello". The phenomenon described by Aefrizzo and Nico83 can be found in most Central-Southern Italian dialects.



Ah ok. I agree that in Italian there isn't something like that.


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## francisgranada

Cari amici, non cancellate nulla , è interessante quello che dite (almeno per me). Negli ultimi  giorni viene pronunciata spesso la parola "Gri*ll*o" (5 stelle) in TV, quindi provo a vedere (o meglio: sentire) se mi sembra palatalizzata o no.


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## bearded

francisgranada said:


> I'm afraid that not everybody will agree with me, however I'd like to know the opinion of other foreros ...
> 
> I.e. I've noticed a "slightly" palatal pronounciation even of the double "ll" in (the modern) Italian. This may depend on the concrete region, of course, however I often hear the double "ll" prounounced somewhat patatalized (not exactly as the Spanish "ll", but something between the double "ll" and the double "ʎʎ", e.g. "grillo").


No, in the correct Italian pronunciation double L is never palatalized. We pronounce grillo, spillo etc. with the same doubleL sound as in palla, molla.
There are local 'dialect'-nuanced pronunciations (e.g. in the region around Ferrara) where LL is sort of palatalized,  but it does not happen in the standard language.


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