242 The Loom of Language larger stratum of Classical Latin words introduced by scholars^ clergy, lawyers or technicians Words of the second class arc easy to recognize The roots have die same shape as those of our own loan-words which belong to the same class. The others, that is to say the older ones, are less easy to recogni^ and therefore more difficult to memorize. The home student can get some fun out of the otherwise dreary task of memorizing a basic word-list by noting the sound-shifts which dis- guise or even distort beyond recognition the original Latin form. Illustrative examples of this trick will be the basis of the next few pages which deal with phonetic changes during the period when Latin was breaking up mto what we now call French^ Spanish^ Portuguese, and Italian. When Latin began to bieak up into these dialects the II had become silent Initially the symbol has disappeared m all but four Italian words* It is soundless in French and in Spanish words^ though it survives in the spelling. Apparently the people of the Roman Bmpire also became slack about the use of compound consonants such as it, pt> rt The first of these has disappcaied in all the daughter dialects,, except in Latin words remtrodvccd by scholais In Italian wosds other than those of the last-named type CT-~ TT9 m Spanish C2"~~ C// (a^ m muUf)^ in Portuguese and Old Fiench CT IT In Modem French the symbol remains -IT, but the T is usually silent. The combination pt becomes t (or tf) m old words of all the Romance dialects, though scholars have sometimes put back an unpronounced p or b in script., as m the modern French sept for the Old French set (seven) or as in our debt derived from the French dette* LATIN ITALIAN SPANISH PORJTU- DICTO detto dicho ditu FACTO fatto hccho fcito LACTE latte Icchc kite LECTO letto Iccho leito NOCTE notte nodbc noire OCTO otto echo oito SEPTEM sette siete sctc TECTO tetto tccho tcto i'RTOCH ENGLISH dii said fait done lau milk ht bed umt hujt mght eight sepi toit seven roof Except; in French there was decay of the initial combinations pl9 dy fl. In Italian / fades out in the y~ sound represented by L In Spanish