<Tr> <Td_colspan="9"> Traditional academic transcription in Latin and Romance studies, respectively . </Td> </Tr> <P> One profound change that affected Vulgar Latin was the reorganisation of its vowel system . Classical Latin had five short vowels, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, and five long vowels, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, each of which was an individual phoneme (see the table in the right, for their likely pronunciation in IPA), and four diphthongs, ae, oe, au and eu (five according to some authors, including ui). There were also long and short versions of y, representing the rounded vowel / y (ː) / in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced / i (ː) / even before Romance vowel changes started . </P> <P> There is evidence that in the imperial period all the short vowels except a differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts . So, for example ē was pronounced close - mid / eː / while ĕ was pronounced open - mid / ɛ /, and ī was pronounced close / iː / while ĭ was pronounced near - close / ɪ / . </P> <P> During the Proto - Romance period, phonemic length distinctions were lost . Vowels came to be automatically pronounced long in stressed, open syllables (i.e. when followed by only one consonant), and pronounced short everywhere else . This situation is still maintained in modern Italian: cade (ˈkaːde) "he falls" vs. cadde (ˈkadde) "he fell". </P>

The romance languages (e.g. french spanish) belong to which of the following language families