Latin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages: • The late Indo-European diphthong evolved into
ou. • The late Indo-European from vocalic laryngeals evolved into
a. • The Indo-European syllabic liquids developed an epenthetic vowel
o, giving Italic
ol, or. • The Indo-European syllabic nasals developed an epenthetic vowel
e, giving Italic
em, en. • Word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European were fricativised: >
f, f, h, f. • The sequence was assimilated into
kʷ...kʷ (Proto-Indo-European 'five' > Latin ). Latin and Faliscan also have characteristics not shared by other branches of Italic. They retain the Indo-European labiovelars as
qu-, gu- (later becoming velar and semivocal), whereas in
Osco-Umbrian they become labial
p, b. Latin and Faliscan use the ablative suffix
-d, seen in
med ("me", ablative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of
ou into
ū, though this happens later than the Latino-Faliscan era, occurring around the 2nd century BCE (Latin
cuī /ku.iː/ ("to whom", dative). In other positions there is no distinction between
diphthongs and
hiatuses: for example,
persuādere ("to persuade") is a diphthong but
sua ("his"/"her") is a hiatus. For reasons of symmetry, it is quite possible that many sequences of
gu in archaic Latin in fact represent a voiced labiovelar /gʷ/. == Lanuvian ==