It is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɛ.lo/.
It makes sense for that to be the pronunciation as "ci" before another vowel makes a /t͡ʃ/ sound, but that is useful for A, O and U only, with E it already makes a /t͡ʃ/ sound.
If the answer is etymology, then why out of all etymologies this specific one was kept in Italian when it has a pretty phonemic spelling?
ONE THING: I know that "J'ai fait ça déjà" is technically grammatically correct, but I've already heard to avoid it since it sounds unnatural, and French people normally find other ways to vary sentences like adding a "moi" to the beginning (although unlike the other Romance languages, the "moi" is formally separated by a comma from the rest of the phrase so I won't count it here), correct me if I'm wrong!!!
I've seen many people saying that Sardinian is the closest language to Latin, but 100% of the time they just mention that "oh C and G weren't palatilized before E and I" fact alongside the examples chentu and chelu and bam the video ends.
What are some other examples of Sardinian preserving features from Latin that other Romance languages didn't? Like grammar, phonology, etc.
I do not know if this is the correct place to ask this, as this might be more generally historical than actual linguistics, so let me know please.
Catalan is currently the 6th biggest Romance language, and has had influence over other Romance languages due to the Mediterranean trades, it is secure in Catalonia and is overall a pretty stable and relevant language.
But it was considered to be just an Occitan dialect up until the end of the 19th century, and still is very close to the Occitan dialects in general.
When you look at the current state of the modern Occitan dialects, it gets sad as they have been seriously oppressed by French in France, its use is rare and more exclusive to familiar settings, and the language is massively declining in its number of speakers.
It gets me thinking, would have Occitan been as popular and relevant as Catalan nowadays if it had more luck throughout its history? That is, if the French hadn't happened.
German, Romansh, Luxembourgish and some other languages close to German primarily use ⟨sch⟩ to represent /ʃ/, as ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sc⟩ are reserved for other sounds.
Italian, Ligurian, Sardinian and some other languages in the Italian peninsula use ⟨sch⟩ to block /ʃ/ before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩ and make it be pronounced /sk/, as normal ⟨sc⟩ is pronounced /ʃ/ in these cases.