I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is a type of sound change in which a back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following syllable contains , or (a voiced palatal approximant, sometimes called ''yod'', the sound of English in ''yes''). It is a category of regressive metaphony, or

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

. The term is usually used by scholars of the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...

: it is particularly important in the history of the Germanic languages because inflectional suffixes with an or led to many vowel alternations that are still important in the morphology of the languages.

Germanic languages

''I-mutation'' took place separately in the various Germanic languages from around 450 or 500 AD in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

area and affected all the early languages except for

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

. It seems to have taken effect earliest and most completely in Old English and

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

. It took place later in Old High German; by 900, its effects are consistently visible only in the spelling of Germanic .

Other languages

''I-mutation'' exists in many other languages but is often referred to by different names. However, in the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

, it is more commonly called '' metaphony'' (from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

, meaning "process of changing sounds", of which German ''umlaut'' is a translation). Meanwhile, in

Celtic languages The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edwar ...

, it is referred to as '' affection''. A type of i-mutation is also observed in Anatolian languages, including Hittite,

Luwian The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub- ...

, Lycian and Lydian.

Korean language

In Middle Korean, I-backward-sequenced vowels (ㅐ, ㅔ, ㅚ, ㅟ, ㅢ, ...) were diphthongs, i.e. ㅐ , ㅔ , ㅚ , ㅟ , ㅢ . However, in early modern Korean, they are monophthongized by umlaut, i.e. ㅐ , ㅔ , ㅚ , ㅟ with only one exception: ㅢ. However, in late modern Korean, ㅟ is diphthongized to . Also, ㅚ is unstable and standard Korean allows to pronounce both and . In modern

Korean language Korean (South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the official language, official and national language of both North Korea and So ...

, there are two types of I-mutation, or I-assimilation: I-forward-assimilation (ㅣ 순행 동화) and I-backward-assimilation (ㅣ 역행 동화). Assimilation occurs when ㅣ is in front of (forward) or behind (backward) the syllable. In standard Korean, only a few words are allowed to assimilate, however, exceptions are often observed in some dialects and casual usage. I-forward-assimilation adds sound, but I-backward-assimilation causes vowel to umlaut. * Forward: 피어 (to bloom) → 피여 , 아니오 (no) → 아니요 * Backward: 남비 (pot) → 냄비 , (Western Korean dialect) 어미 (mother) → 에미 , 고기 (meat) → 괴기

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:I-Mutation Sound laws Vowel shifts Germanic languages

Germanic languages

Other languages

Korean language

See also

References