Italian words like fiore 'flower'; fiume 'river'; pioggia 'rain'; and piuma 'feather' are cognates with the French
Words in two or more daughter languages that derive from the same word
in the ancestral language are known as cognates. Sound changes
work to change the actual phonetic form of the word in the different languages,
but we can still recognize them as originating from a common source because
of the regularities within each language. For example, a change happened
in Italian such that in initial consonant clusters, the l that
originally followed p and f changed to i. Thus
Italian words like fiore 'flower'; fiume 'river'; pioggia 'rain'; and piuma 'feather' are cognates with the French
fleur; fleuve; pluie; and plume, respectively, and with
Spanish flora, fluvial (adj. 'riverine'); lluvia (by a
later change); and pluma respectively.