Front vowel in the context of "Voiceless postalveolar affricate"

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.

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.

Eastern New England English, historically known as the Yankee dialect since at least the 19th century, is the traditional regional dialect of Maine, New Hampshire, and the eastern half of Massachusetts. Features of this variety once spanned an even larger dialect area of New England, for example, including the eastern halves of Vermont and Connecticut for those born as late as the early twentieth century. Studies vary as to whether the unique dialect of Rhode Island technically falls within the Eastern New England dialect region.

Eastern New England English, here including Rhode Island English, is classically associated with sound patterns such as: non-rhoticity, or dropping r when not before a vowel; both variants of Canadian raising, including a fairly back starting position of the /aʊ/ vowel (as in MOUTH); and some variation of the PALM–LOT–THOUGHT vowel distinctions, the marry–merry distinction, or both. Eastern New England (excluding Rhode Island) is also nationally recognized for its highly front PALM/START vowel. The most well-known subsets include Boston accents, Maine accents, and a cultivated or elite accent, sometimes known as a "Boston Brahmin accent" within Boston, that was associated with wealthy New England families in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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: