Portuguese, like Catalan, preserves the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin which became diphthongs in most other Romance languages; cf. Port., Cat., Sard. ' ; Fr. ', Sp. ', It. ', Ro. ', from Lat. ' ("stone"); or Port. ', Cat. ', Sard. '; Sp. ', It. ', Fr. ', Ro. ', from Lat. ' ("fire"). Another characteristic of early Portuguese was the loss of intervocalic "l" and "n", sometimes followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels, or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them: cf. Lat. ' ("to exit"), ' ("to have"), ' ("jail"), Port. ', ', '.