Front vowel in the context of "Eastern New England English"

Umlaut (/ˈʊmlaʊt/; UUM-lout) is a name for the two dots diacritical mark (◌̈) as used to indicate in writing (as part of the letters ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩, and ⟨ü⟩) the result of the historical sound shift due to which former back vowels are now pronounced as front vowels (for example [a], [ɔ], and [ʊ] as [ɛ], [œ], and [ʏ]). (The term Germanic umlaut is also used for the underlying historical sound shift process.)

In its contemporary printed form, the mark consists of two dots placed over the letter to represent the changed vowel sound. In some Romance and other languages, the diaeresis diacritic has the same appearance but a different function.

Gamma (/ˈɡæmə/ ; uppercase Γ, lowercase γ; Greek: γάμμα, romanized: gámma) is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop IPA: [ɡ]. In Modern Greek, this letter normally represents a voiced velar fricative IPA: [ɣ], except before either of the two front vowels (/e/, /i/), where it represents a voiced palatal fricative IPA: [ʝ]; while /g/ in foreign words is instead commonly transcribed as γκ).

In the International Phonetic Alphabet and other modern Latin-alphabet based phonetic notations, it represents the voiced velar fricative.

In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a rounded vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, and back vowels tend to be rounded. However, some languages, such as French, German and Icelandic, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height (degree of openness), and others, like Vietnamese and Turkish, distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. Alekano is unusual in having only unrounded vowels.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, U+0339 ◌̹ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW and U+031C ◌̜ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW, to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively.Thus [o̜] has less rounding than cardinal [o], and [o̹] has more (closer to the rounding of cardinal [u]). These diacritics can also be used with unrounded vowels: [ɛ̜] is more spread than cardinal [ɛ], and [ɯ̹] is less spread than cardinal [ɯ].

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 /i/ (raising) when the following syllable contains /i/, /iː/, or /j/.

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 *fōts, pl. *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, nor the earlier Indo-European ablaut (vowel gradation), which is observable in the conjugation of Germanic strong verbs such as sing/sang/sung.

A voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨tʃ⟩, ⟨t͡ʃ⟩, ⟨t͜ʃ⟩, or, in broad transcription, ⟨c⟩. This affricate has a dedicated symbol U+02A7 ʧ LATIN SMALL LETTER TESH DIGRAPH, which was retired by the International Phonetic Association but is still used. The alternative commonly used in American tradition is ⟨č⟩. It is familiar to English speakers as the "ch" sound in "chip".

Historically, [tʃ] often derives from a former voiceless velar stop /k/ (as in English church; also in Gulf Arabic, Slavic languages, Indo-Iranian languages and Romance languages), or a voiceless dental stop /t/ by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel (as in English nature; also in Amharic, Portuguese, some accents of Egyptian, etc.).

The close and mid-height front vowels of English (vowels of i and e type) have undergone a variety of changes over time and often vary by dialect.

The Low-Back-Merger Shift is a chain shift of vowel sounds found in several accents of North American English, beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century and most significantly involving the low back merger (which collapses together the low-back vowel sounds: /ɑː/, /ɒ/, and /ɔː/ in words like PALM, LOT, and THOUGHT respectively) accompanied by the lowering and backing of each of the front-lax vowels: /æ/, /ɛ/, and /ɪ/ (in words like TRAP, DRESS, and KIT respectively).

The back and downward movement of all the front lax vowels was first noted as distinguishing certain California English speakers in 1987, and it was soon known by linguists as the California Vowel Shift. Then, it came to distinguish certain Canadian English speakers in a 1995 study, now known in that variety as the Canadian Shift; today, it helps define Standard Canadian English. The California and Canadian Shifts were initially reported as two separate phenomena, but the same basic pattern was next documented among some younger varieties of Western New England English, Western American English, Pacific Northwest English, and Midland American English, all in speakers born from the 1980s onward. Linguists have proposed possible relationships between the low back merger and the similarly structured shifts in these regional dialects, though no unifying hypothesis is dominantly agreed upon yet. Assuming the similar chain shifts found in Canada and various parts of the U.S. have a single common origin, a variety of names have been proposed for this trans-regional chain shift which, besides the low-back-merger shift, include the Third Dialect Shift, Elsewhere Shift, Short Front Vowel Shift, and North American Shift.

In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds. The sounds involved in a chain shift can be ordered into a "chain" in such a way that after the change is complete, each phoneme ends up sounding like what the phoneme before it in the chain sounded like before the change. The changes making up a chain shift, interpreted as rules of phonology, are in what is termed counterfeeding order.

A well-known example is the Great Vowel Shift, which was a chain shift that affected all of the long vowels in Middle English. The changes to the front vowels may be summarized as follows: