Editing Votic language (section)

==== Vowel harmony ====
Votic has a system of [[vowel harmony]], in which vowels sounds pattern according to their position in the oral cavity. Underived words tend to contain either ''front-harmonic'' or ''back-harmonic'' vowels, including suffixes. Front-harmonic vowels are /æ e ø y/ ⟨ä e ö ü⟩; the corresponding back-harmonic vowels are /ɑ ɤ o u/ ⟨a õ o u⟩. Unlike Finnish, Votic only has a single neutral vowel /i/.

However, there are exceptions in the behavior of /o ø/ ⟨o ö⟩. Some suffixes including the vowel /o/ do not harmonize (the occurrence of /ø/ ⟨ö⟩ in non-initial syllables is generally a result of Finnish or [[Ingrian language|Ingrian]] loan words), and similarly onomatopoetic words and loanwords are may follow outside patterns of vowel harmony.