How to Learn the Basic Word List 247 LATIN ITALIAN SPANISH PORTUGUESE FRENCH ENGLISH augusto agosto AOUT August castigaie castigate castigat CHATIER to chastise mtegro intero enteio inteiro ENTIER entire fugire fuggite hmt fugit ruiR to flee lege legge ley lei LOI law bgate legate ligat LIER to tie negate negate negat NIER to deny mgro neto negro NOIR black pacare pagaie pagat PAYER to pay pagano pagano pagao PAIEN heathen plaga piaga llaga praga PLAIE wound (plague} ruga (btrada) (ccdle} tua RUE street Another Fiench consonant-shift scarcely conceals the Latin equi- valent A v which through phonetic loss has become final hardens to /, or is mute., as shown in the next instalment for our vocabulary of Romance words One reason for mentioning this is that it brings to life a grammatical irregularity. The feminine form (p 357) of adjectives which have the masculine singular ending -/takes ~ve m place of it LATIN ITALIAN SPANISH PORTUGUESE FRENCH ENGLISH bove bove buey boi BCEUF OX breve breve BREF (-eve) brief novo (-a) nuovo nuevo novo NEUF (-V6) new novem nove nucve nove NEUF nine clave chiave Have chave CLEF key nervo nervo nervio nervo NERF nerve ovo uovo huevo ovo CEUF egg vivo (-a) vivo (-a) VIF (-ve) alive Two vowel-shifts are peculiar to French (a) in an open syllable the Latin stressed a became an e sound, spelt to-day E, fe, &, AI3 or -ER, (V) in the same position the Latin stressed e changed to the diphthong OL The combination now stands for a sound like wa in Scots we twa French grammarians disapproved of this pronunciation tall the Revo- lution put its seal on it Examples of these changes are overleaf What 1$ most characteristic of modern French words is loss of body through successive elimination of terminal vowels, medial consonants^ and final consonants The consequence is that French has a very large pro- portion of monosyllables Indeed, almost every bisyllabic Latin word which has left a direct descendant in modern French is now represented by a single syllable* as illustrated by the following couplets m which a