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In linguistics, a language exhibiting vowel harmony has a
phonological rule that requires all vowels in a word to belong to a single class of vowels. The most common types of vowel harmony rules are rules
requiring all vowels to be either rounded or unrounded, or requiring all
vowels to be either front or back vowels.
For example, in the Finnish language, there are three classes of
vowels:
- Front vowels: (/ü/, /ö/, /ć/)
- Back vowels: (/u/, /o/, /a/)
- Neutral vowels: (/i/, /e/) [non-low unrounded vowels]
And the rule states that words may contain vowels from group 3 and/or vowels from either group 1 or group 2
(but not both 1 and 2). Thus, [tütö], [tütöti], and [tutoti] are permissible, but *[tutöti] and *[tüto] are not.
As a consequence Finns often have trouble pronouncing foreign loanwords which
violate these rules. The word "Olympia" for example, tends to become "Olumpia" in their mouths.
Linguists typically distinguish vowel harmony from umlaut, a similar phenomenon that
also adjusts the front or back status of words and affixes. In umlaut, at least historically, the front or back position of a
vowel in an affix used in inflection
alters the vowels in the root it is attached to. In vowel harmony, the position of the vowel of the root requires that the vowel
of the affix be adjusted to match it. Some have speculated that the vowel harmony of the northwestern Finno-Ugric languages influenced the phonological phenomenon of
umlaut that most of the living Germanic languages display.
In Mongolian, the rule states:
- Front vowels: (/e/, /ö/, /ü/)
- Back vowels: (/a/, /o/, /u/)
- Neutral vowel: (/i/)
In Tatar:
- Front vowels: (/ä/, /e/, /i/, /ö/, /ü/)
- Back vowels: (/a/, /ı/, /í/, /o/, /u/)
- Forein vowel /é/ uses as back vowel
Other languages, such as Middle Korean, have more arbitrary
class-membership rules. (In Modern Korean, vowel harmony is no longer strictly observed except in a few special cases.)
This phenomenon has been documented in Telugu, several Bantu languages, and almost all languages in Uralic languages as well as proposed Altaic
language family.
Compound words often violate this rule; for instance the Finnish month name "syyskuu"
("kuu" means month). In such words suffixes agree with the vowels in the last part: syyskuuta.
The counterpart of vowel harmony, consonant harmony, is less widespread. Most commonly, consonant harmony requires all the
sibilants of the word to belong either to the anterior class (s-like sounds) or the nonanterior class (sh-like sounds). Such patterns are found in Navajo, Kinyarwanda, and elsewhere. Various Austronesian
languages exhibit consonant harmony among the liquid consonants,
with [r] assimilating at a distance to [l] or vice versa.
See also
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