[æ]→[e]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 4/5

Near-open front unrounded vowel to Close-mid front unrounded vowel

The shift from the near-open front unrounded vowel [æ] (ash) to the mid front unrounded vowel [e] is a form of vowel raising. This change often occurs before nasals or as part of a general vowel chain shift.

Phonetic Effects

Raising

Language Examples

English (Raising before nasals) Germanic

man [mæn]→[mɛn] / [meən]— Raising of /æ/ in many American and Australian dialects.

Old English to Middle English Germanic

æppel (OE)→appel / epel (ME stages)— Varied raising and lowering of front vowels during the transition to Middle English.

Related Transformations

Inverse: Lowering

More Raising Shifts

[ã] → [õ] — Raising [a] → [ã] — Assimilatory Nasalization [a] → [∅] — Elision [a] → [ʔ] — Glottalization [a] → [ə] — Vowel Reduction

Sources & References

Spotted a mistake or have a better example?

EchoDrift is community-driven. You can suggest a change directly through GitHub.

Propose an Edit on GitHub