In linguistics, umlaut is a sound change
in which a vowel is pronounced more like
a following vowel or semivowel. The term
umlaut was originally coined in
connection with the study of the
Germanic languages, except from Gothic,
in which the process occurred
prominently in the history of many of
them. While the common English plural is
umlauts, the correct German plural is
Umlaute.
Umlaut is a form of assimilation, the
process by which one speech sound is
altered to make it more like another
adjacent sound. If a word has two
vowels, one far back in the mouth and
the other far forward, more effort is
required to pronounce the word than if
the vowels were closer together. Thus,
one possible linguistic development is
for these two vowels to be drawn closer
together.
In the general sense, umlaut is
essentially the same as regressive
metaphony.
The most commonly seen types of umlaut
are the following:
Vowel raising, triggered by a following
high vowel.
Vowel fronting, triggered by a following
front vowel.
Vowel lowering, triggered by a following
non-high vowel.
Vowel rounding, triggered by a following
rounded vowel.
These processes may be named by the
vowel that triggers the change. However,
processes named in this fashion may not
have consistent meanings across language
families.
All of these processes occurred in the
history of the Germanic languages; see
Germanic umlaut for more details.
I-mutation is the most prominent of the
processes, to the extent that it is
often referred to simply as "umlaut".
Similar processes also occurred in the
history of the Celtic languages,
especially Old Irish. In this context,
these processes are often referred to as
affection.
Vowel-raising umlaut occurred in the
history of many of the Romance
languages, in which it is normally
termed metaphony.
The umlaut vowel diacritic was
originally used to indicate vowels
affected by Germanic umlaut.
See also
Diaeresis
Vowel harmony
Metaphony
Germanic umlaut
I-mutation
References
