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Historical sound change
General
Metathesis
Dissimilation
Fortition
Lenition (weakening)
Sonorization (voicing)
Spirantization (assibilation)
Rhotacism
Debuccalization (loss of place)
Elision (loss)
Apheresis (initial)
Syncope (medial)
Apocope (final)
Haplology (similar syllables)
Fusion
Cluster reduction
Compensatory lengthening
Epenthesis (addition)
Anaptyxis (vowel)
Excrescence (consonant)
Prosthesis (initial)
Paragoge (final)
Unpacking
Vowel breaking
Assimilation
Coarticulation
Palatalization (before front vowels)
Labialization (before rounded vowels)
Final devoicing (before silence)
Vowel harmony
Consonant harmony
Cheshirisation (trace remains)
Nasalization
Tonogenesis
Floating tone
Sandhi (boundary change)
Crasis (contraction)
Liaison, linking R
Consonant mutation
Tone sandhi
Hiatus

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance (see below) assimilatory phonological process involving vowels in some languages. Metathesis (məˈtæθəsɨs is a Sound change that alters the order of Phonemes in a Word. For the chemical term see Catabolism In Phonology, particularly within Historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon Fortition is a consonantal change from a 'weak' sound to a 'strong' one the opposite of the more common Lenition. Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change In Linguistics, assibilation is the term for a Sound change resulting in a Sibilant consonant Rhotacism may refer to several phenomena related to the usage of the Consonant R (whether as an Alveolar tap, Alveolar trill, or Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a Vowel, a Consonant, or a whole Syllable) in a word or phrase producing a result that is easier For other uses of the word syncope, see Syncope (disambiguation In Phonology, syncope ( Greek syn- + kopein Haplology is defined as the elimination of a Syllable when two consecutive identical or similar syllables occur In Phonetics and Historical linguistics, fusion is the merger of the features of two segment into one In Phonology and Historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of Consonant clusters in certain environments or over time Compensatory lengthening in Phonology and Historical linguistics is the lengthening of a Vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following Consonant In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" Prothesis in Linguistics (from Greek pro "before" + tithenai "to put" is the prepending of Phonemes at the beginning of a Paragoge is the addition of a sound to the end of a word Often this is due to Nativization, and a logical counterpart of Epenthesis, particularly vocalic epenthesis In Historical linguistics and Language contact, unpacking is the separation of the features of a segment into distinct segments In Historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a Monophthong into a Diphthong or Triphthong. Assimilation is a common Phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary Palatalization or palatalisation (ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən generally refers to two phenomena As a process or the result of a process "Lip rounding" redirects here See Roundedness for the lip rounding of vowels Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation akin to the similar assimilatory process involving Vowels i James A Matisoff (born July 14, 1937) is a professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California Berkeley and noted In Phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words A floating tone is a Morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no Consonants no Vowels but only tone. Sandhi ( Sanskrit saṃdhi sa संधि "joining" is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at Morpheme Crasis (κρᾶσις is the contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word In French, most written word-final Consonants are silent in most contexts Linking R and intrusive R are phonological phenomena that occur in many non- rhotic dialects of English. Consonant mutation is the phenomenon in which a Consonant in a word is changed according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment Tone sandhi is the change of tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase Hiatus (Latin "yawning" (haɪˈeɪtəs in Linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent Vowels sometimes with an intervening Glottal stop Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages Assimilation is a common Phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other.

Contents

Explanation

Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds that are not adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation sometimes occurs across the entire word. This is represented schematically in the following diagram:

before
assimilation		   after
assimilation
VaCVbCVbC → VaCVaCVaC   (Va = type-a vowel, Vb = type-b vowel, C = consonant)

In the diagram above, the Va (type-a vowel) causes the following Vb (type-b vowel) to assimilate and become the same type of vowel (and thus they become, metaphorically, "in harmony").

The vowel that causes the vowel assimilation is frequently termed the trigger while the vowels that assimilate (or harmonize) are termed targets. In most languages, the vowel triggers lie within the root of a word while the affixes added to the roots contain the targets. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word This may be seen in the Hungarian dative suffix:

Root Dative Gloss
város város-nak "city"
öröm öröm-nek "joy"

The dative suffix has two different forms -nak/-nek. Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The -nak form appears after the root with back vowels (a and o are both back vowels). The -nek form appears after the root with front vowels (ö and e are front vowels).

Another example: Turkish ev-ler-imiz "our houses" (house-{PL}-{1PL POSS}) vs. dam-lar-ımız "our roofs" (roof-{PL}-{1PL POSS}).

Harmony assimilation may spread either from the beginning of the word to the end or from the end to the beginning. Progressive harmony (a. k. a. left-to-right harmony) proceeds from beginning to end; regressive harmony (a. k. a. right-to-left harmony) proceeds from end to beginning. Languages that have both prefixes and suffixes often have both progressive and regressive harmony. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word Languages that primarily have prefixes (and no suffixes) usually have only regressive harmony — and vice versa for primarily suffixing languages.

Features of vowel harmony

Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as

In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels, etc. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance, Altaic languages have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony. Altaic, according to its proponents is a language family that includes 66 Languages ref> Altaic languages spoken by about 348 million people mostly in and around

In some languages, not all vowels participate in the vowel conversions — these vowels are termed either neutral or transparent. Intervening consonants are also often transparent. In addition to these transparent segments, many languages have opaque vowels that block vowel harmony processes.

Finally, languages that do have vowel harmony sometimes have words that fail to harmonize. This is known as disharmony. Many loanwords exhibit disharmony, either within a root (e. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation g. , Turkish/Turkic vakit/waqit, "time" [from Arabic waqt], where °vakıt/°waqıt would have been expected) or in suffixes (e. g. , Turkish saat-ler "(the) hours" [hour-PL, from Arabic sâ`a], where saat-lar would have been expected). In Turkish, disharmony tends to disappear through analogy, especially within loanwords. Suffixes drop disharmony to a lesser extent, e. g. Hüsnü (a man's name) < previously Hüsni, from Arabic husnî; müslümân "Moslem, Muslim (adj. and n. )" < °müslimân, from Arabic muslim).

Vowel harmony & umlaut terminology

Related articles: Germanic umlaut, I-mutation, Metaphony. In Linguistics, umlaut (from German um - "around"/"the other way" + Laut "sound" is a process whereby a I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is an important type of Sound change In Historical linguistics, metaphony is a general term for a class of Sound change in which one vowel in a word is influenced by another in a process of assimilation

The term vowel harmony is used in two different senses, explained below.

In the first sense, vowel harmony refers to any type of vowel harmony: that is, both progressive and regressive vowel harmony. When used in this sense, the term vowel harmony is synonymous with the term metaphony. In Historical linguistics, metaphony is a general term for a class of Sound change in which one vowel in a word is influenced by another in a process of assimilation

In the second sense, vowel harmony refers only to progressive vowel harmony (beginning-to-end). For regressive harmony, the term umlaut is used. In this sense, metaphony is the general term while vowel harmony and umlaut are both sub-types of metaphony. (Note that the term umlaut is also used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation. )

Vowel harmony, archiphonemes, and underspecification


See Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification for an explanation of archiphoneme and neutralization with an example of a Tuvan archiphoneme involved in vowel harmony. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Tuvan (Tuvan Тыва дыл Tyva dyl) also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan, or Tuvin, is one of the Turkic languages.

Examples in selected languages

Vowel harmony appears in many Uralic and almost all Altaic languages. The Uralic languages (jʊˈrælɨk constitute a language family of 39 Languages spoken by approximately 20 million people Altaic, according to its proponents is a language family that includes 66 Languages ref> Altaic languages spoken by about 348 million people mostly in and around

Uralic languages

Finnish

A Venn diagram of the Finnish vowel harmony system. The front vowels are in blue, neutral in green and back in yellow
A Venn diagram of the Finnish vowel harmony system. Venn diagrams or set diagrams are Diagrams that show all hypothetically possible Logical relations between a finite collection of sets (groups The front vowels are in blue, neutral in green and back in yellow
Front ä ö y
Neutral e i
Back a o u

In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels -- front, back, and neutral, where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings — but not enclitics — have only archiphonemic vowels, which are realized as either A, U, O or Ä, Y, Ö, but never both, inside a single word. In Linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent Word. From vowel harmony it follows that the initial syllable of each single (non-compound) word controls the frontness or backness of the entire word. Non-initially, the neutral vowels are transparent to and unaffected by vowel harmony. In the initial syllable:

  1. a back vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with back (or neutral) vowels, e. g. pos+ahta+(t)a → posahtaa
  2. a front vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with front (or neutral) vowels, e. g. räj+ahta+(t)a → räjähtää.
  3. a neutral vowel acts like a front vowel, but does not control the frontness or backness of the word: if there are back vowels in non-initial syllables, the word acts like it began with back vowels, even if they come from derivational endings, e. g. sih+ahta+(ta) → sihahtaa cf. sih+ise+(t)a → sihistä

For example:

Some dialects that have a sound change opening diphthong codas also permit archiphonemic vowels in the initial syllable. For example, standard 'ie' is reflected as 'ia' or 'iä', controlled by noninitial syllables, in the Tampere dialect, e. g. tiä ← tie but miakka ← miekka.

Vowel harmony is a grammaticalized feature of phonotactics, thus it may not work as expected from pure phonology, as evidenced by tuotteeseensa (not *tuotteeseensä). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix -nsa, grammatically it is preceded by a back vowel-controlled word. As shown in the examples, neutral vowels make the system unsymmetrical, as they are front vowels phonologically, but leave the front/back control to any grammatical front or back vowels. There is little or no change in the actual vowel quality of the neutral vowels.

As a consequence, Finnish speakers often have problems with pronouncing foreign words which do not obey vowel harmony. For example, olympia is pronounced olumpia. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e. g. chattailla/chättäillä ) or ill-standardized (e. g. polymeeri, autoritäärinen, which violate vowel harmony). Where a foreign word violates vowel harmony by not using front vowels because it begins with a neutral vowel, then last syllable counts. For example, Wikipediassa — the initial syllable -pe- of the second word would require the final vowel to be -ä, but because it isn't, the process degrammaticalizes, becoming pure phonotactics.

With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example, syyskuu ("autumn month" i. e. September) has both u and y, but it consists of two words syys and kuu, and declines syys·kuu·ta (not *syyskuutä). The same goes for enclitics, e. g. taaksepäin "backwards" consists of the word taakse "to back" and -päin "-wards". If fusion takes place, the vowel is harmonized by some speakers, e. g. tälläinen pro tällainen ← tämän lainen.

Hungarian

Hungarian language
Alphabet, including ő ű and
cs dz dzs gy ly ny sz ty zs
Phonetics and phonology
Vowel harmony
Grammar

   Noun phrases
   Verbs
T-V distinction
Regulatory body
Hungarian name
Language history

   Sound correspondences
Tongue-twisters
Hungarian pronunciation of English • Old Hungarian script • English words from Hungarian
This box: view • talk • edit

Vowel types
open middle closed
Back ("low") a á o ó u ú
Front
("high")		 unrounded
(neutral)		   e é i í
rounded   ö ő ü ű

Hungarian, like its distant relative Finnish, has the same system of front, back, and intermediate (neutral) vowels. Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet. The double acute accent ( ˝) is a Diacritic mark of the Latin script used primarily in written Hungarian. Cs is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Hungarian Cs is used in the Hungarian alphabet to represent Dz is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Polish, Kashubian, Macedonian, Slovak, and Hungarian to represent Dzs is the eighth letter and only trigraph, of the Hungarian alphabet. Gy is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Linguistics & Pronunciation Gy is the thirteenth letter of the Ly is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Usage Ly is the twentieth letter of the Hungarian Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Hungarian, Indonesian, and Luganda. Sz is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian, Polish, Kashubian, and formerly in German. Zs is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Linguistics & Pronunciation Zs is the last (forty-fourth letter of This article deals with the Phonology and the Phonetics of the Hungarian language. Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages Hungarian grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of the Hungarian language, a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent This page is about Noun phrases in Hungarian grammar. Syntax The order of elements in the noun phrase is always Determiner This page is about Verbs in Hungarian grammar. Lemma or citation form There is basically only one pattern for verb endings with In Sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a Language has second-person Pronouns that distinguish varying levels of The Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Nyelvtudományi Intézete was created in 1949. Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language with some 14 million speakers predominantly in Europe, and it is also present in North America as an immigrant There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Uralic languages. The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from such speakers imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English either by transferring The Old Hungarian script, also known as rovásírás (rovásírás hu ''székely rovásírás'' ( or simply hu ''rovás'' is a type of Writing system used This is a partial list of Hungarian Loanwords in the English:; Biro: From László Bíró, the Hungarian inventor of the Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The basic rule is that words with front ("high") vowels get front vowel suffixes (kézbe - in(to) the hand), back ("low") vowel words back suffixes (karba - in(to) the arm).

The only essential difference in classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that Hungarian does not observe the difference between Finnish 'ä' [æ] and 'e' [e] — the Hungarian front vowel 'e' [æ] is the same as the Finnish front vowel 'ä'.

Behaviour of neutral vowels

Intermediate or neutral vowels are usually counted as front ones, since they are formed that way, the difference being that neutral vowels can occur along with back vowels in Hungarian word bases (e. g. répa carrot, kocsi car). The basic rule is that words with neutral and back vowels usually take back suffixes (e. g. répá|ban in a carrot, kocsi|ban in a car).

The suffix rules for words with both kinds of suffixes are the following:

Suffixes in multiple forms

While most grammatical suffixes in Hungarian come in either one form (eg. -kor) or two forms (front and back, eg. -ban/-ben), some suffixes have an additional form for rounded vowels (such as ö, ő, ü and ű), e. g. hoz/-hez/-höz. An example on basic numerals:

-kor
(at, for time)		 -ban/-ben
(in)		 -hoz/-hez/-höz
(to)
Back hat (6)
nyolc (8)
három (3)		 hatkor
nyolckor
háromkor
egykor
négykor
kilenckor
ötkor
kettőkor		 hatban
nyolcban
háromban		 hathoz
nyolchoz
háromhoz
Front unrounded
(neutral)		 egy (1)
négy (4)
kilenc (9)		 egyben
négyben
kilencben
ötben
kettőben		 egyhez
négyhez
kilenchez
rounded öt (5)
kettő (2)		 öthöz
kettőhöz

Altaic languages

Mongolian

Feminine (front) e ö ü
Masculine (back) a o u
Neutral i

Mongolian is similar. The Mongolian language (mn [[ImageMonggol kelesvg 17px]] Mongɣol kele, Cyrillic: Монгол хэл Mongol khel) is the best-known member of Front vowels in Mongolian are considered feminine, while back vowels are considered masculine.

Tatar

Front ä e i ö ü
Back a ı í o u é

Tatar has no neutral vowels. The Tatar language (,, Татар теле, Татарча) is a Turkic Language spoken by the Tatars. The vowel é is found only in loanwords. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation Other vowels also could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language also has a rounding harmony, but it isn't represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in place where ı and e are written.

Kazakh

Kazakh's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony that is not represented by the orthography, which strongly resembles the system in Kyrgyz. Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants natively kk Qazaq tili, kk Қазақ тілі; pronounced tˈlə is a Turkic language closely related to

Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony. Kyrgyz or Kirghiz (Кыргыз тили Kyrgyz tili, قىرعىز ٴتىلى is a Turkic language, and together with Russian, an official

Turkish

Front Back
Unrounded Rounded Unrounded Rounded
High i ü ı u
Low e ö a o

Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: [±front] and [±rounded]. Turkish ( tr Türkçe IPA) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages.

Front/back harmony

Turkish has two classes of vowels -- front and back. Turkish ( tr Türkçe IPA) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e. g. Türkiye'de "in Turkey" but kapıda "at the door".

Rounding harmony

In addition, there is a secondary rule that i and ı tend to become ü and u respectively after rounded vowels, so certain suffixes have additional forms. This gives constructions such as Türkiye'dir "it is Turkey", kapıdır "it is the door", but gündür "it is day", paltodur "it is the coat".

Exceptions

Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like bu|gün "today" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as -iyor); there are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule (such as anne "mother"). A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus İstanbul'dur "it is İstanbul".

Yokuts

Vowel harmony is present in all Yokutsan languages and dialects. Yokutsan (also known as Yokuts and Mariposan) is an endangered Language family spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California For instance, Yawelmani has 4 vowels (which additionally may be either long or short). Yawelmani (also Yowlumni) is an extinct variety of the Valley Yokuts language (of the Yokutsan family formerly spoken in southern In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound These can be grouped as in the table below.

  unrounded rounded
high i u
non-high a ɔ

In vowels in suffixes must harmonize with either /u/ or its non-/u/ counterparts or with /ɔ/ or non-/ɔ/ counterparts. For example, the vowel in the aorist suffix appears as /u/ when it follows a /u/ in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as /i/. Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as /ɔ/ when it follows a /ɔ/ in the root; otherwise it appears as /a/.

-hun/-hin   (aorist suffix)
muṭhun [muʈhun] 'swear (aorist)'
giy̓hin [ɡij’hin] 'touch (aorist)'
gophin [ɡɔphin] 'take of infant (aorist)'
xathin [xathin] 'eat (aorist)'
-tow/-taw   (nondirective gerundial suffix)
goptow [ɡɔptɔw] 'take care of infant (nondir. ger. )'
giy̓taw [ɡij’taw] 'touch (nondir. ger. )'
muṭtaw [muʈtaw] 'swear (nondir. ger. )'
xattaw [xatːaw] 'eat (nondir. ger. )'

In addition to the harmony found in suffixes, there is a harmony restriction on word stems where in stems with more than one syllable all vowels are required to be of the same lip rounding and tongue height dimensions. For example, a stem must contain all high rounded vowels or all low rounded vowels, etc. This restriction is further complicated by (i) long high vowels being lowered and (ii) an epenthetic vowel [i] which does not harmonize with stem vowels. In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in"

Korean

Korean Vowel Harmony
Positive/"light"/Yang Vowels ㅏ (a) ㅑ (ya) ㅗ (o) ㅛ (yo)
ㅐ (ae) ㅘ (wa) ㅚ (oe) ㅙ (wae)
Negative/"heavy"/Yin Vowels ㅓ (eo) ㅕ (yeo) ㅜ (u) ㅠ (yu)
ㅔ (e) ㅝ (wo) ㅟ (wi) ㅞ (we)
Neutral/Centre Vowels ㅡ (eu) ㅣ (i) ㅢ (ui)

There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system These categories loosely follow the front (positive) and mid (negative) vowels. Traditionally, Korean had strong vowel harmony; however, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Korean. In modern Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adjectives, adverbs, conjugation, and interjections. Onomatopoeia (also spelled onomatopœia, from Greek: ονοματοποιΐα is a Word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In Linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a Verb, Noun or Adjective from its Principal parts by Inflection An interjection is a Part of speech that usually has no connection with the rest of the sentence and simply expresses Emotion on the part of the speaker The vowel ㅡ(eu) is considered a partially neutral and a partially negative vowel. There are other traces of vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel harmony such as 사람 (saram), which means person, and 부엌 (Bueok), which means kitchen.

Proponents of Korean as an Altaic language use the existence of vowel harmony in Korean to support their argument. Altaic, according to its proponents is a language family that includes 66 Languages ref> Altaic languages spoken by about 348 million people mostly in and around

Japanese

Modern Japanese and all historically recorded forms of Japanese lack clear evidence of vowel harmony, but some consider that such a process must have existed at one time. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities However, a consensus has not been reached. See the articles on Old Japanese and Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai for more information. Old Japanese is the old stage of the Japanese language. The stage in and before Nara period is called. is an archaic Kanazukai used to write Japanese during the Nara period.

Other languages

Vowel harmony occurs in many other languages, such as

Other types of harmony

Although vowel harmony is the most well-known harmony, not all types of harmony that occur in the world's languages involve only vowels. Other types of harmony involve consonants (and is known as consonant harmony). Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation akin to the similar assimilatory process involving Vowels i Rarer types of harmony are those that involve tone or both vowels and consonants (e. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words g. postvelar harmony).

Vowel-consonant harmony

Some languages have harmony processes that involve an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example, Chilcotin has a phonological process known as vowel flattening (i. Chilcotin (also Tsilhqot’in, Tzilkotin) is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in British Columbia by the Tsilhqot’in people e. post-velar harmony) where vowels must harmonize with uvular and pharyngealized consonants. Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants Pharyngealization is a Secondary articulation of Consonants or Vowels by which the Pharynx or Epiglottis is constricted during the articulation

Chilcotin has two classes of vowels:

Additionally, Chilcotin has a class of pharyngealized "flat" consonants [ʦˤ, ʦʰˤ, ʦ’ˤ, sˤ, zˤ]. Whenever a consonant of this class occurs in a word, all preceding vowels must be flat vowels.

    [jətʰeɬʦˤʰosˤ] 'he's holding it (fabric)'
    [ʔapələsˤ] 'apples'
    [natʰák’ə̃sˤ] 'he'll stretch himself'

If flat consonants do not occur in a word, then all vowels will be of the non-flat class:

    [nænɛntʰǽsʊç] 'I'll comb hair'
    [tetʰǽsk’ɛn] 'I'll burn it'
    [tʰɛtɬʊç] 'he laughs'

Other languages of this region of North America (the Plateau culture area), such as St'át'imcets, have similar vowel-consonant harmonic processes. St'at'imcets (also Lillooet, Lilloet, St’át’imcets) is an Interior Salishan language spoken in southern British Columbia,

Languages with vowel harmony

References

  1. ^ Lloret (2007:16)

See also

Bibliography

External links

Dictionary

vowel harmony

-noun

  1. (linguistics) A phonological process involving vowels in some languages, setting constraints on what vowels (e.g. front/back vowels only) may be found near each other and sometimes in the entire word.
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