Editing Germanic umlaut (section)

{{Short description|Type of vowel change}}
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{{About|the linguistic phenomenon in the Germanic languages|the diacritic umlaut symbol ¨|Umlaut (diacritic)}}
{{See also|Germanic a-mutation|i-mutation|U-mutation (disambiguation){{!}}u-mutation}}
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The '''Germanic umlaut''' (sometimes called '''i-umlaut''' or '''i-mutation''') is a type of linguistic [[umlaut (linguistics)|umlaut]] in which a [[back vowel]] changes to the associated [[front vowel]] ([[fronting (phonology)|fronting]]) or a [[front vowel]] becomes closer to {{IPAslink|i}} ([[raising (phonetics)|raising]]) when the following syllable contains {{IPA|/i/}}, {{IPA|/iː/}}, or {{IPAslink|j}}. 

It took place separately in various Germanic languages starting around 450 or 500 [[Common Era|CE]] and affected all of the early languages{{sfnp |Cercignani |1980a }} except [[Gothic language|Gothic]].{{sfnp |Cercignani |1980b }} An example of the resulting vowel alternation is the English plural ''foot ~ feet'' (from Proto-Germanic {{lang|gem-x-proto|*fōts}}, pl. {{lang|gem-x-proto|*fōtiz}}). 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 (disambiguation)|u-mutation]], nor the earlier [[Indo-European ablaut]] (''vowel gradation''), which is observable in the conjugation of [[Germanic strong verb]]s 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: {{angbr|ä}}, {{angbr|ö}}, and {{angbr|ü}}, usually pronounced /[[Open-mid front unrounded vowel|ɛ]]/ (formerly /[[near-open front unrounded vowel|æ]]/), /[[Close-mid front rounded vowel|ø]]/, and /[[Close front rounded vowel|y]]/. Umlaut is a form of [[Assimilation (linguistics)|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.