The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel (fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to (raising) when the following syllable contains , , or .
It took place separately in various Germanic languages starting around 450 or 500 CE and affected all of the early languages except Gothic. An example of the resulting vowel alternation is the English plural foot ~ feet (from Proto-Germanic , pl. ). Germanic umlaut, as covered in this article, does not include other historical vowel phenomena that operated in the history of the Germanic languages such as Germanic a-mutation and the various language-specific processes of u-mutation, nor the earlier Indo-European ablaut (vowel gradation), which is observable in the conjugation of Germanic strong verbs such as sing/sang/sung.
While Germanic umlaut has had important consequences for all modern Germanic languages, its effects are particularly apparent in German, because vowels resulting from umlaut are generally spelled with a specific set of letters: , , and , usually pronounced /ɛ/ (formerly /æ/), /ø/, and /y/. Umlaut is a form of assimilation or vowel harmony, the process by which one speech sound is altered to make it more like another adjacent sound. If a word has two vowels with 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; therefore, one possible linguistic development is for these two vowels to be drawn closer together.
Description
Germanic umlaut is a specific historical example of this process that took place in the unattested earliest stages of Old English and Old Norse and apparently later in Old High German, and some other old Germanic languages. The precise developments varied from one language to another, but the general trend was this: Whenever a back vowel (, or , whether long or short) occurred in a syllable and the front vowel or the front glide occurred in the next, the vowel in the first syllable was fronted (usually to , , and respectively). Thus, for example, West Germanic "mice" shifted to proto-Old English , which eventually developed to modern mice, while the singular form lacked a following and was unaffected, eventually becoming modern mouse. When a low or mid-front vowel occurred in a syllable and the front vowel or the front glide occurred in the next, the vowel in the first syllable was raised. This happened less often in the Germanic languages, partly because of earlier vowel harmony in similar contexts. However, for example, proto-Old English became in > 'bed'. The fronted variant caused by umlaut was originally allophonic (a variant sound automatically predictable from context), but it later became phonemic when the context was lost but the variant sound remained. The following examples show how, when final was lost, the variant sound became a new phoneme in Old English.
+ Umlaut and final vowel Process Language Singular Plural Singular Plural Original form Proto-Germanic Loss of final -z West Germanic Germanic umlaut Pre-Old English Loss of i after a heavy syllable Unrounding of ø̄ (> ē) Most Old English dialects Unrounding of ȳ (> ī) Early Middle English Great Vowel Shift Early Modern and Modern English ("mouse") ("mice") ("foot") ("feet")
Outcomes in modern spelling and pronunciation
The following table surveys how Proto-Germanic vowels which later underwent i-umlaut generally appear in modern languages—though there are many exceptions to these patterns owing to other sound changes and chance variations. The table gives two West Germanic examples (English and German) and two North Germanic examples (Swedish, from the east, and Icelandic, from the west). Spellings are marked by pointy brackets (⟨...⟩) and pronunciation, given in the international phonetic alphabet, in slashes (/.../). +Proto-Germanic vowelexample wordusual modern reflex after i-umlaut English German Swedish Icelandicɑ ('people')⟨e⟩, /ɛ/ (men)⟨ä⟩, /ɛ/ ()⟨ä⟩, /ɛ/ ()⟨e⟩, /ɛ/ ()ɑː ('geese'), which became in North Germanic and North Sea Germanic, though not in German⟨ea⟩, ⟨ee⟩, /iː/ (geese)⟨ä⟩, /ɛ/ ()⟨ä⟩, /ɛ/ ()⟨æ⟩, /aɪ/ ()ono single example in all languages⟨e⟩, /ɛ/ ( > eaves)⟨ö⟩, /øː/ ( > )⟨ö⟩, /œ/ ( > )⟨e⟩, /ɛ/ ( > )ɔː ('feet')⟨ea⟩, ⟨ee⟩, /iː/ (feet)⟨ü⟩, /yː/ ()⟨ö⟩, /œ/ ()⟨æ⟩, /aɪ/ ()u ('fill')⟨i⟩, /ɪ/ (fill)⟨ü⟩, /ʏ/ ()⟨y⟩, /ʏ/ ()⟨y⟩, /ɪ/ ()uː ('lice')⟨i⟩, /aɪ/ (lice)⟨eu, äu⟩, /ɔʏ̯/ ()⟨ö⟩, /œ/ ()⟨ý⟩, /i/ ()ɑu ('hear')⟨ea⟩, ⟨ee⟩, /iː/ (hear)⟨ö⟩, /øː/ ()⟨ö⟩, /øː/ ()⟨ey⟩, /ɛɪ/ ()ɑi ('heal')⟨ea⟩, ⟨ee⟩, /iː/ (heal)⟨ei⟩, /aɪ̯/ ()⟨e⟩, /eː/ ()⟨ei⟩, /ɛɪ/ ()eu, iu ('steer')⟨ea⟩, ⟨ee⟩, /iː/ (steer)⟨eu⟩, /ɔʏ̯/ ()⟨y⟩, /yː/ ()⟨ý⟩, /i/ () Whereas modern English does not have any special letters for vowels produced by i-umlaut, in German the letters , , and almost always represent umlauted vowels (see further below). Likewise, Swedish , , and and Icelandic , , , and are almost always used for vowels produced by i-umlaut. However, German represents vowels from multiple sources, which is also the case for in Swedish and Icelandic.
German orthography
German orthography is generally consistent in its representation of i-umlaut. The umlaut diacritic, consisting of two dots above the vowel, is used for the fronted vowels, making the historical process much more visible in the modern language than is the case in English: – , – , – , – . This is a neat solution when pairs of words with and without umlaut mutation are compared, as in umlauted plurals like – ("mother" – "mothers").
However, in a small number of words, a vowel affected by i-umlaut is not marked with the umlaut diacritic because its origin is not obvious. Either there is no unumlauted equivalent or they are not recognized as a pair because the meanings have drifted apart. The adjective ("ready, finished"; originally "ready to go") contains an umlaut mutation, but it is spelled with rather than as its relationship to ("journey") has, for most speakers of the language, been lost from sight. Likewise, ("old") has the comparative ("older"), but the noun from this is spelled ("parents"). ("effort") has the verb ("to spend, to dedicate") and the adjective ("requiring effort") though the 1996 spelling reform now permits the alternative spelling (but not ). For , see below.
Some words have umlaut diacritics that do not mark a vowel produced by the sound change of umlaut. This includes loanwords such as from English kangaroo, and from French . Here the diacritic is a purely phonological marker, indicating that the English and French sounds (or at least, the approximation of them used in German) are identical to the native German umlauted sounds. Similarly, Big Mac was originally spelt in German. In borrowings from Latin and Greek, Latin , , or Greek , , are rendered in German as and respectively (, "Egypt", or , "economy"). However, Latin and Greek are written in German instead of (). There are also several non-borrowed words where the vowels ö and ü have not arisen through historical umlaut, but due to rounding of an earlier unrounded front vowel (possibly from the labial/labialized consonants occurring on both sides), such as ("five"; from Middle High German ), ("twelve"; from ), and ("create"; from ).
Substitution When German words (names in particular) are written in the basic Latin alphabet, umlauts are usually substituted with , and to differentiate them from simple , , and .
Orthography and design history
The German phonological umlaut is present in the Old High German period and continues to develop in Middle High German. From the Middle High German, it was sometimes denoted in written German by adding an to the affected vowel, either after the vowel or, in the small form, above it. This can still be seen in some names: Goethe, Goebbels, Staedtler.
In blackletter handwriting, as used in German manuscripts of the later Middle Ages and also in many printed texts of the early modern period, the superscript still had a form that would now be recognisable as an , but in manuscript writing, umlauted vowels could be indicated by two dots since the late medieval period.
Unusual umlaut designs are sometimes also created for graphic design purposes, such as to fit an umlaut into tightly-spaced lines of text. This may include umlauts placed vertically or inside the body of the letter.
Morphological effects
Although umlaut was not a grammatical process, umlauted vowels often serve to distinguish grammatical forms (and thus show similarities to ablaut when viewed synchronically), as can be seen in the English word man. In ancient Germanic, it and some other words had the plural suffix , with the same vowel as the singular. As it contained an , this suffix caused fronting of the vowel and, when the suffix later disappeared, the mutated vowel remained as the only plural marker: men. In English, such plurals are rare: man, woman, tooth, goose, foot, mouse, louse, brother (archaic or specialized plural in brethren), and cow (poetic and dialectal plural in kine). This effect also can be found in a few fossilized diminutive forms, such as kitten from cat, kernel from corn, and the feminine vixen from fox. Umlaut is conspicuous when it occurs in one of such a pair of forms, but there are many mutated words without an unmutated parallel form. Germanic actively derived causative weak verbs from ordinary strong verbs by applying a suffix, which later caused umlaut, to a past tense form. Some of these survived into modern English as doublets of verbs, including fell and set versus fall and sit. Umlaut could occur in borrowings as well if a stressed vowel was coloured by a subsequent front vowel, such as German , "Cologne", from Latin , or , "cheese", from Latin .
Parallel umlauts in some modern Germanic languages
GermanicGermanEnglishDutchLimburgishSwedishFaroese – – to fall – to fell – – – – – – foot – feet – (no umlaut) – – – – – – – old – elder – eldest – – (no umlaut) – – (no umlaut) – – (irregular) – – (irregular) – – full – fill – – – – – – long – length – – – – – – louse – lice – (no umlaut) – – –
The Standard Dutch pair – differs from the rest in that it already features a front diphthong ( – ), which ultimately comes from a long close back monophthong , retained in Limburgish dialects in the singular form. In the Dutch-based orthography usually used to write Limburgish, the digraph and the double have the same phonetic values as the long versions of and in German, that is and , whereas is , the back counterpart of .
Umlaut in Germanic verbs
Some interesting examples of umlaut involve vowel distinctions in Germanic verbs. Although these are often subsumed under the heading "ablaut" in tables of Germanic irregular verbs, they are a separate phenomenon.
Present stem Umlaut in strong verbs
A variety of umlaut occurs in the second and third person singular forms of the present tense of some Germanic strong verbs. For example, German ("to catch") has the present tense . The verb ("give") has the present tense , but the shift → would not be a normal result of umlaut in German. There are, in fact, two distinct phenomena at play here; the first is indeed umlaut as it is best known, but the second is older and occurred already in Proto-Germanic itself. In both cases, a following triggered a vowel change, but in Proto-Germanic, it affected only . The effect on back vowels did not occur until hundreds of years later, after the Germanic languages had already begun to split up: , with no umlaut of , but , with umlaut of .
Present stem Umlaut in weak verbs ()