or in certain words (e.g. nazion "nation", lezion "lesson"). is silent. is no longer used except in the traditional spelling of certain proper names; similarly for before and . Long vowels and their origin Long vowels are typical of the Friulian language and greatly influence the Friulian pronunciation of Italian. Friulian distinguishes between short and long vowels: in the following minimal pairs (long vowels are marked in the official orthography with a circumflex accent): lat (milk) lât (gone) fis (fixed, dense) fîs (sons) lus (luxury) lûs (light n.) Friulian dialects differ in their treatment of long vowels. In certain dialects, some of the long vowels are actually diphthongs. The following chart shows how six words (sêt thirst, pît foot, fîl "wire", pôc (a) little, fûc fire, mûr "wall") are pronounced in four dialects. Each dialect uses a unique pattern of diphthongs (yellow) and monophthongs (blue) for the long vowels: Note that the vowels î and û in the standard language (based on the Central dialects) correspond to two different sounds in the Western dialects (including Codroipo). These sounds are not distributed randomly but correspond to different origins: Latin short in an open syllable produces Western but Central , whereas Latin long produces in both dialects. Similarly, Latin short in an open syllable produces Western but Central , whereas Latin long produces in both dialects. The word mûr, for example, means both "wall" (Latin ) and "(he, she, it) dies" (Vulgar Latin * from Latin ); both words are pronounced in Central dialects, but respectively and in Western dialects. Long consonants (ll, rr, and so on), frequently used in Italian, are usually absent in Friulian. Friulian long vowels originate primarily from vowel lengthening in stressed open syllables when the following vowel was lost. Friulian vowel length has no relation to vowel length in Classical Latin. For example, Latin yields vâl "it is worth" with a long vowel, but Latin yields val "valley" with a short vowel. Long vowels aren't found when the following vowel is preserved, e.g.: before final -e < Latin , cf. short nuve "new (fem. sg.)" < Latin vs. long nûf "new (masc. sg.)" < Latin ; before a non-final preserved vowel, cf. tivit /ˈtivit/ "tepid, lukewarm" < Latin , zinar /ˈzinar/ "son-in-law" < Latin , ridi /ˈridi/ "to laugh" < Vulgar Latin (Classical ). It is quite possible that vowel lengthening occurred originally in all stressed open