[ĩ]→[e]Certainty: 2/5Commonality: 2/5

Nasalized close front unrounded vowel to Close-mid front unrounded vowel

Denasalization and lowering of the nasalized close front vowel [ĩ] to the close-mid front vowel [e]. This shift involves loss of nasality combined with lowering of vowel height, occurring in Romance and Slavic languages through denasalization processes and vowel quality shifts in historical phonological change.

Phonetic Effects

Denasalization, Lowering

Language Examples

French (medieval to modern) Romance

[ĩ]→[e]— In French, denasalization of nasal vowels combined with lowering of high nasal vowels toward mid vowel space, particularly in denasalization before voiceless obstruents.

Portuguese (contemporary dialects) Romance

[ĩ]→[e]— In some Portuguese dialects, nasalized [ĩ] denasalizes and lowers to [e] in casual speech and before non-nasal consonants.

Polish (Pre-Slavic to modern) Slavic

[ĩ]→[e]— Proto-Slavic nasalized high vowels underwent denasalization with lowering, as seen in the development of Old Church Slavic and modern Polish nasal vowel systems.

Related Transformations

Reverse Simple denasalization without lowering Denasalization of mid front nasal vowel

More Romance Shifts

[ã] → [õ] — Raising [a] → [ã] — Assimilatory Nasalization [a] → [∅] — Elision [a] → [ə] — Vowel Reduction [ai] → [e] — Monophthongization

Sources & References

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