Gallo-Romance language

General characteristics

Gallo-Romance languages are usually characterised by the loss of all unstressed final vowels other than /-a/ (most significantly, final /-o/ and /-e/ were lost). However, when the loss of a final vowel would result in an impossible final cluster (e.g. /tr/), an epenthetic vowel appears in place of the lost vowel, usually /e/. Generally, the same changes also occurred in final syllables closed by a consonant. Franco-Provençal, however, generally preserves the original final vowel after a syllable-final cluster, such as quattuor "four" > quatro (compare French quatre). The Gallo-Romance languages also have historically used a Celtic counting system of base twenty as opposed to Latin base ten.