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Everywhere, unaccented vowels have had a different history from accented, and in some languages they have so weakened as to disappear altogether in certain positions. At the end of a word, for instance, even -a, the most sonorous of the vowels, has weakened to a neutral vowel in Romanian, Portuguese, and some Catalan and Rhaetian dialects—in some French dialects it is still pronounced as a neutral vowel sound (such as the second vowel in English alphabet), but it has been lost completely in the standard language. Final -o, from Latin -ō or ŭ, was lost very early in French, Occitan, ...(100 of 14748 words)