 This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong rather than containing a semivowel , and in other cases the sound was simply dropped.We know this because it did not participate in the sound shift from to .Thus Latin "amaui", "amauit" ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *"amai" and *"amaut", yielding for example Portuguese "amei", "amou".