[e]→[ʔ]Certainty: 4/5Commonality: 5/5

Close-mid front unrounded vowel to Glottal stop

The shift from the mid-front vowel [e] to a glottal stop [ʔ] is a process of glottal reinforcement. It typically occurs word-initially to provide a 'hard attack' or to separate words in connected speech.

Phonetic Effects

Glottalization, Hard Attack

Language Examples

English Germanic

egg [e-]→[ʔeɡ]— Glottal onset: [ʔ] prepended before vowel-initial words. Note: this is ∅→ʔ before /e/, not e→ʔ replacement.

German Germanic

Ende [ˈendə]→[ˈʔɛndə]— German systematically adds [ʔ] before any initial vowel; this is a phonological rule of onset insertion, not vowel replacement.

Related Transformations

Reverse

More Germanic Shifts

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

Sources & References

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