I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is a type of

sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

in which a

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

is fronted or a

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

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 a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

. The term is usually used by scholars of the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, 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 spoke ...

: 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 CE in the

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

area and affected all the early languages, except for Gothic. It seems to have taken effect earliest and most completely in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

and

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was 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 ...

. It took place later in

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...

; 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, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

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

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

, meaning "process of changing sounds," which translates into German as ''umlaut'': "about" with "sound"). Meanwhile, in

Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...

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

Korean language

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

Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...

, there are two types of I-mutation, or I-assimilation: I-forward-assimilation () and I-backward-assimilation (). 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: (to bloom) → , (no) → * Backward: (Western Korean dialect) (baby) → , (mother) → , (meat) →

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:I-Mutation Vowel shifts Germanic sound laws

Germanic languages

Other languages

Korean language

See also

References