Vowel harmony
In
linguistics, a language is said to possess
vowel harmony when it has a
phonological rule that requires all
vowels in a word to belong to a single class. Such a language defines at least two contrasting classes of vowels based loosely on criteria like roundedness or
frontness. Some vowels may be considered neutral, i. e. belonging to all classes.
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 place of articulation of a vowel in an
affix used in
inflection alters the vowels in the root it is attached to. In vowel harmony, the place of articulation of the (main) vowel in the root requires that the other vowels (in inflectional and derivational affixes) be adjusted to match it.
A related but much less widespread phenomenon is
consonant harmony.
Vowel harmony appears in almost all
Uralic and
Altaic languages. 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.
Uralic languages
Finnish
| ä || ö || y |
|---|
| e || i |
| a || o || u |
In the
Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels --
front,
back, and
neutral. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels, but neutral vowels may be combined with either group. For example,
aaltoileva contains only neutral vowels and back vowels, while
äidillä contains only front vowels and neutral vowels. When a word contains only neutral vowels, its suffices use front vowels, e.g. when
-lla/-llä is added to
kieli, it becomes
kielellä (not
As a consequence,
Finns often have trouble pronouncing foreign words which do not obey vowel harmony. For example,
olympia is pronounced
olumpia.
Compound words do not follow this rule, but their constituent elements do. For example, the Finnish
month name
syyskuu (
September, literally "autumn-month") has both
u and
y. In such words suffixes agree with the vowels in the last part:
syys·kuu·ta.
Hungarian
| (= the neutral ones)
>e || é || i || í || || |
|---|
| ö || ő || ü || ű || || |
| a || á || o || ó || u || ú |
Hungarian, like its distant relative Finnish, has
front,
back, and
intermediate (neutral) vowels.
Intermediate or
neutral vowels are usually counted as
front ones, since they are formed that way, the difference being that neutral vowels can occur along with back vowels in Hungarian word bases (eg.
ré''p'''a''''' carrot,
ko''cs'''i''''' car). Most of the words with neutral and back vowels may take only back suffixes (eg.
répá|ban in a carrot,
kocsi|ban in a car), but in some cases they can take either front or back suffixes (eg.
farmer|ban or
farmer|ben, in jeans). While most grammatical suffixes in Hungarian come in either one form (eg.
-kor) or two forms (front and back, eg.
-ban/-ben), some suffixes have an additional form for use with ö, ő, ü, and ű (eg.
hoz/-hez/-höz), ie., the rounded vowels. See an example on basic numerals:
|
|
|
-kor(''at'', for time)
|
-ban/-ben(''in'')
|
-hoz/-hez/-höz(''to'')
|
| Back
|
h'''a'''t (6), ny'''o'''lc (8),h'''á'''r'''o'''m (3)
|
-k'''o'''r
|
-b'''a'''n
|
-h'''o'''z
|
| Front, unrounded(that is, the neutral ones)
|
egy (1), n'''é'''gy (4),k'''i'''l'''e'''nc (9)
|
-k'''o'''r
|
-b'''e'''n
|
-h'''e'''z
|
| Front, rounded
|
öt (5),kett'''ő''' (2)
|
-k'''o'''r
|
-b'''e'''n
|
-h'''ö'''z
|
Altaic languages
Mongolian
| e || ö || ü |
|---|
| a || o || u |
| i |
Mongolian is similar. Front vowels in Mongolian are considered feminine, while back vowels are considered masculine.
Tatar
| ä || e || i || ö || ü |
|---|
| a || ı || í || o || u || é |
Tatar has no neutral vowels. The vowel é is found only in
loanwords.
Turkish
| e || i || ö || ü |
|---|
| a || ı || o || u |
Turkish has two classes of vowels --
front and
back. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels.
Compound words often violate this rule. In such words suffixes agree with the vowels in the last part. Also the rule does not hold applicable for loan words, one-syllable words and some suffixes (such as
-iyor).
Other languages
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 and several
Bantu languages.
See also
Category:Phonology
de:Vokalharmonie
eo:Vokala harmonio
fr:Harmonie vocalique
nl:Vocaalharmonie
ja:母音調和
tt:Sínharmonizm
zh:元音和谐律