See the article on the phonological history of French for full details. Latin before a consonant ultimately was absorbed into the preceding vowel, producing a long vowel (indicated in Modern French spelling with a circumflex accent). For the most part, these long vowels are no longer pronounced distinctively long in Modern French (although long "ê" is still distinguished in Quebec French). In most cases, the formerly long vowel is pronounced identically to the formerly short vowel (e.g. "mur" "wall" and "mûr" "mature" are pronounced the same), but some pairs are distinguished by their quality (e.g. "o" vs. "ô" ). A separate, later vowel lengthening operates allophonically in Modern French, lengthening vowels before the final voiced fricatives (e.g. "paix" "peace" vs. "pair" "even"). Late Vulgar Latin of the French area had a full complement of palatalized consonants, and more developed over time. Most of them, if preceded by a vowel, caused a sound (a yod, as in the words "you" or "yard") to appear before them, which combined with the vowel to produce a diphthong, eventually developing in various complex ways. A also appeared after them if they were originally followed by certain stressed vowels in open syllables (specifically, or ). If the appearance of the sound produced a triphthong, the middle vowel dropped out. Examples, showing the various sources of palatalized consonants:  During the Old French period, "l" before a consonant became "u", producing new diphthongs, which eventually resolved into monophthongs, e.g. "false" > "fausse" . See the article on phonological history of French for details. The sound changes involving consonants are less striking than those involving vowels. In some ways, French is actually relatively conservative. For example, it preserves initial "pl-", "fl-", "cl-", unlike Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, e.g. "to rain" > "pleuvoir" (Spanish "llover", Portuguese "chover", Italian "piovere"). Consonants between vowels were subject to a process called lenition (a type of weakening). In French, this was more extensive than in Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. For example, between vowels went through the following stages in French: > > > no sound, whereas in Spanish only the first two changes happened, in Brazilian Portuguese only the first change happened, and in Italian no changes happened.