languages.

The nasal vowels are again unlike those of the French language. The
vowel affected by the following nasal consonant preserves its own
quality of sound, and the consonant is pronounced; at the end of a word
both _m_ and _n_ are pronounced as _ng_ in the English word _ring_. The
Provençal utterance of _matin_, _tèms_, is therefore quite unlike that
of the French _matin_, _temps_. This change of the nasal consonants
into the _ng_ sound whenever they become final occurs also in the
dialects of northern Italy and northern Spain. This pronunciation of the
nasal vowels in French is, as is well known, an important factor in the
famous "accent du Midi."

The oral vowels are in general like the French. It is curious that the
close _o_ is heard only in the infrequent diphthong _óu_, or as an
obscured, unaccented final. This absence of the close _o_ in the modern
language has led Mistral to believe that the close _o_ of Old Provençal
was pronounced like _ou_ in the modern dialect, which regularly
represents it. A second element of the "accent du Midi" just referred to
is the substitution of an open for a close _o_. The vowel sound of the
word _peur_ is not distinguished from the close sound in _peu_. In the
orthography of the Félibres the diagraph _ue_ is used as we find it in
Old French to represent this vowel. Probably the most striking feature
of the pronunciation is the unusual number of diphthongs and
triphthongs, both ascending and descending. Each vowel preserves its
proper sound, and the component vowels seem to be pronounced more slowly
and separately than in many languages. It is to be noted that _u_ in a
diphthong has the Italian sound, whereas when single it sounds as in
French. The unmarked _e_ represents the French _é_, as the _e_ mute is
unknown to the Provençal.