Germanic Umlaut

Germanic Umlaut

In linguistics, umlaut (from German um- "around"/"the other way" + Laut "sound") is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages. In Germanic umlaut (also i-umlaut or i-mutation), a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel or a front vowel becomes closer to /i/ when the following syllable contains /i/, /iː/, or /j/. This process took place separately in the various Germanic languages starting around 450 or 500 AD, and affected all of the early languages except for Gothic. An example of the resulting vowel change is the English plural foot > feet.

Umlaut should be clearly distinguished from other historical vowel phenomena such as the earlier Indo-European ablaut (vowel gradation), which is observable in the declension of Germanic strong verbs such as sing/sang/sung.