U-mutation
Encyclopedia
U-mutation, or u-umlaut, can refer to various processes that occurred in the history of some Germanic languages
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Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
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- Old Norse u-umlaut — allophones of front vowels before back rounded vowels made distinctive around the 8th century
- Old English back mutation
- Proto-Germanic's process of a-mutationA-mutationA-mutation is a metaphonic process supposed to have taken place in late Proto-Germanic .-General description:In a-mutation, a short high vowel was lowered when the following syllable contained a non-high vowel . Thus, since the change was produced by other vowels besides */a/, the term a-mutation...