# Only five vowels in all Romance Language?



## Testing1234567

Is French the only language where there are more than five vowels? If yes, why is French the exception?
Is there any exception in the Romance Languages that the five vowels are not /a/, /e/, /i/, /ɔ/, /u/ (or their allophones such as [ɐ] for /a/)?


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## ahvalj

Every literary Romance language except Spanish has more than five vowels. Open and closed vowels in e. g. Italian, Catalan and Portuguese are not allophones.


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## Testing1234567

What do you mean by _literary_ Romance language? What do you mean by _except Spanish_​? I didn't say open and closed vowels are allophones...


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## ahvalj

Literary language is the accepted variant, not a dialect. Dialects may have their own peculiarities.

"Except Spanish" means: French, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Rheto-Romanian, Sardinian, Romanian and several minor languages. By the way, I had forgotten Sardinian: it has five vowels as well.

I suggest you to check the Wikipedia pages for each mentioned language and calculate how many distinct phonemes each language possesses. Except Spanish and Sardinian, the rest will have either open/closed "e" and "o" (and "a" in Portuguese and French), or labialized front vowels (Occitan, Rheto-Romanian, French), or middle vowels (Romanian), or nasalized vowels (Portuguese, Occitan, French).


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## Testing1234567

Wait, italian has /ə/?


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## ahvalj

Testing1234567 said:


> Wait, italian has /ə/?


Have I written this? By the way, northern dialects do have vowel reduction.


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## berndf

Testing1234567 said:


> Wait, italian has /ə/?


No. Italian has 7 vowels a, i, u and an open and a closed variant of e and o each; no Schwa.


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## bearded

Hi Testing
1) Like in China, in each of the Romance countries there is  one official language (literary or written language) and many local dialects. 
2) In Italian, è and é are different vowels (in similar words, they determine the meaning: for example ''pèsca'' =peach,  ''pésca'' = fishing (è is an open e like in English 'test', é is a closed sound similar to English 'say' ). The same happens with the o vowel. In Spanish this does not exist: Spanish has one e and one o sound, not opened or closed, at least not in writing).
I think this is what ahvalj meant.
EDIT
In the dialect of Naples and other zones of Southern Italy, the schwa sound exists: it often replaces the final e or the final o in nouns with more than one syllable.  In the famous song ''O sole mio'' (oh my sun) the word 'sole' is pronounced with a final schwa.


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## Testing1234567

Maybe I should edit my question to: Is Spanish the only Romance language with less than 7 distinct vowels?
And is French the only Romance language with more than 7 distinct vowels?


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## ahvalj

No, Portuguese has considerably more than 7: the same as in French except labialized front vowels, not to mention positional reduced variants.


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## Testing1234567

Portuguese only has seven distinct vowels


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## ahvalj

Testing1234567 said:


> Portuguese only has seven distinct vowels


 Ha-ha. What about the nasalized vowels in Portuguese?


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## bearded

I hope that you will receive replies from Rumania, Portugal and Switzerland (Rumantsch or Ladin Language), as I do not know those languages well.


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## ahvalj

Seriously, why not to check the Wikipedia as a starting point?


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## Nino83

Testing1234567 said:


> Maybe I should edit my question to: Is Spanish the only Romance language with less than 7 distinct vowels?
> And is French the only Romance language with more than 7 distinct vowels?



Spanish: 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) 
Italian, Western Catalan, Galician: 7 stressed vowels (a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u), 5 unstressed vowels (a, e, i, o, u) 
Eastern Catalan: 7 stressed vowels (a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u), 3 unstressed vowels (ə, i, u) 
Portuguese: 7 stressed vowels (a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u), 5 unstressed vowels (ɐ, e, i, o, u) (6 in European Portuguese, 5 + ɯ̽), 5 nasal vowels (ɐ̃, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ) 
French: 11 vowels (a, ɛ, œ, e, ø, i, y, ɔ, o, u, ə), 4 nasal vowels (ɒ̃, æ̃, õ, œ̃) 
Romanian: 5 stressed vowels (a, e, i, o, u), 7 unstressed vowels (a, e, i, o, u, ə, ɨ) 

I'm not sure about Romanian (whether ə, ɨ appear only in unstressed syllables or not).


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## Testing1234567

Thank you very much!


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## Youngfun

Nino83 said:


> Portuguese: 7 stressed vowels (a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u), 5 unstressed vowels (ɐ, e, i, o, u) *(6 in European Portuguese, 5 + ɯ̽)*, 5 nasal vowels (ɐ̃, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ)


I thought European Portuguese only had 4 unstressed vowels (ɐ, ɯ̽, i, u)! 


Nino83 said:


> I'm not sure about Romanian (whether ə, ɨ appear only in unstressed syllables or not).


They appear in stressed syllables too.


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## Nino83

Youngfun said:


> I thought European Portuguese only had 4 unstressed vowels (ɐ, ɯ̽, i, u)!



Hi, Youngfun. 
Not always. 
You can find _ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o_ in pre-tonic syllables when there is: 
a) falling diphthongs: _gaiteiro, pautado,  endeusa, foicinha, tourada, boiar_
b) word with suffix when there are closed syllables ending with an l: _salgado, relvado, feltragem, moldar, polpudo​ _
c) words with suffix _-zinho, -zito, -zão, -mente, _(the original stressed vowel isn't reduced): _papelzinho, belamente, devagarzinho _and so on 
d) absolute word first _ɛ, e, ɔ, o_: _operário, olhar, Ernesto, Elisa_
e) other exceptions: _protecção, activo_. 

http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/cpp/acessibilidade/capitulo3_2.html


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## merquiades

Orbilat gives a pretty good description of Portuguese vowels:  9 simple oral, 5 simple nasal, 2 semivowels, 25 oral diphthongs, 4 nasalized diphthongs, 5 oral triphthongs, 4 nasalized triphthongs.  So quite complicated to say the least.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Orbilat gives a pretty good description of Portuguese vowels:  9 simple oral, 4 simple nasal, 2 semivowels, 25 oral diphthongs, 4 nasalized diphthongs, 4 oral triphthongs, 4 nasalized triphthongs.  So quite complicated to say the least.



5 nasal vowels


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## danielstan

Youngfun said:


> They appear in stressed syllables too.


Romanian [ə] in stress syllables appears in very few words, used in popular and familiar speech:
'ăs-ta ("this" masc.), ăla ("that" masc.), ăștia ("these", masc.), ăia ("those", masc.), ălălalt ("the other" masc.), ăilalți ("the others" masc.)
Romanian [ɨ] in stress syllable is quite frequent:
'sân-ge ("blood") < lat. sangus


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## Penyafort

The only Romance languages that have five vowels are Aragonese (except in the Benasquese dialect), Asturian, Sardinian and Spanish (except in the Eastern Andalusian dialect).


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## Nino83

Penyafort said:


> The only Romance languages that have five vowels are Aragonese (except in the Benasquese dialect), Asturian, Sardinian and Spanish (except in the Eastern Andalusian dialect).



Plus Sicilian (/ǐ ē/ merged with /ī/ and /ǔ ō/ merged with /ū/), Sardinian and the Lausberg zone (where long and short vowels merged into five phonemes).


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## Penyafort

Sicilian, indeed, I forgot. Grazzie!


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## Ronin81

The only Romance languages with 5 vowels are Spanish, Gascon and Sardinian.


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## Nino83

Ronin81 said:


> The only Romance languages with 5 vowels are Spanish, Gascon and Sardinian.



And Sicilian /a ɛ i ɔ u/. 
The common Romance with seven stressed vowels /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ reduced to five vowels, /e, i/ = /i/ and  /o, u/ = u). 

casa, cɛrtu, siccu (instead of secco), vinu, cɔttu, curtu (instead of corto), and muru.


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## Penyafort

Aragonese, Asturian, Sardinian, Sicilian and Spanish. 5 languages, so far.

Gascon has more than five vowels, as far as I know.

However, there is a clear difference between Sicilian and the ones coming from Western Romance, since Sicilian merged/reduced some vowels, while Asturian, Aragonese and Spanish turned the open vowels into diphthongs. That is, one can see in those diphthongs the 'reflex' of the Western seven-vowel system after all.


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## Ronin81

To my knowledge Gascon has 5 vowels. It's the odd member of the Occitan family in this respect, and the characteristic, as it happens in Spanish, is usually atributed to Basque substrate.


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## Penyafort

Ronin81 said:


> To my knowledge Gascon has 5 vowels. It's the odd member of the Occitan family in this respect, and the characteristic, as it happens in Spanish, is usually atributed to Basque substrate.



The variety I know a little about, the one from Aran, is standardized and has for sure more than five. The spelling rules mention seven vowels (/a/, /ɛ/, /e/, /i/, /ɔ/, /u/, /y/), 9 if we include two allophones (/ɑ/, /o/).

I know it might be one of the most extreme varieties, but from what I've seen in other descriptive grammars of more central local varieties, there are always at least six vowels, not counting allophones.

Gascon has indeed many features revealing the Basco-Aquitanian substrate, but I'm not that sure about the vowels being clearly one of them.


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