The conservativeness of Italian phonology

The conservativeness of Italian phonology is partly explained by its origin. Italian stems from a literary language that is derived from the 13th-century speech of the city of Florence in the region of Tuscany, and has changed little in the last 700 years or so. Furthermore, the Tuscan dialect is the most conservative of all Italian dialects, radically different from the Gallo-Italian languages less than 100 miles to the north (across the La Spezia-Rimini line).
The following are some of the conservative phonological features of Italian, as compared with the common Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan). Some of these features are also present in Romanian.
Little or no lenition of consonants between vowels, e.g. vīta > vita "life" (cf. Spanish vida [biða], French vie), pedem > piede "foot" (cf. Spanish pie, French pied /pje/).
Preservation of doubled consonants, e.g. annum > anno "year" (cf. Spanish año /aɲo/, French an /ɑ̃/).
Preservation of all Proto-Romance final vowels, e.g. pacem > pace "peace" (cf. Spanish paz, French paix /pɛ/), octō > otto "eight" (cf. Spanish ocho, French huit), fēcī > feci "I did" (cf. Spanish hice, French fis /fi/).
Preservation of intertonic vowels (those between the stressed syllable and either the beginning or ending syllable). This accounts for some of the most noticeable differences, as in the forms quattordici and settimana given above.
Lack of various consonant "deformations", e.g. folia > Italo-Western /fɔʎʎa/ > foglia /fɔʎʎa/ "leaf" (cf. Spanish hoja /oxa/, French feuille /fœj/; but note Portuguese folha /fɔʎɐ/).


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