[o]→[u]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 5/5
Close-mid back rounded vowel to Close back rounded vowel
The shift from the mid-back rounded vowel [o] to the high-back rounded vowel [u] is a diachronic vowel raising change documented across multiple language families. It typically occurs as part of a chain shift (e.g., the Great Vowel Shift in English) or as a wholesale merger of long mid vowels with high vowels (Proto-Mayan, Historical Polish). Note: unstressed o→u in Portuguese and Catalan is phonologically conditioned and borders on allophony, but the primary documentation here is historical.
Phonetic Effects
Vowel Raising, Great Vowel Shift, Vowel Reduction
Language Examples
boot [oː]→boot [uː]— Great Vowel Shift: The ME close-mid long vowel raised to become the modern high-back vowel.
goose→goose
livro [o] (book)→[ˈlivɾu]— Systematic raising of unstressed final o to u.
góra [oː] (historical)→[ˈɡura]— Historical raising of the long close-mid back vowel; standard Polish orthography 'ó' represents this historical [oː].
Proto-Mayan *oː (long close-mid back vowel)→u— Parallel to the *eː > i change, all Cholan languages raised Proto-Mayan long *oː to short /u/. Together these two changes collapsed the vowel-length distinction in Cholan by merging the long mid vowels with the short high vowels. Documented in Ch'ol, Ch'orti', and Chontal through Kaufman and Norman's comparative Proto-Cholan work.
Related Transformations
More Raising Shifts
Sources & References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
- Campbell, L. (2013). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Mayan_language
- Kaufman, T. & Norman, W. (1984). An Outline of Proto-Cholan Phonology, Morphology and Vocabulary. In Munro Edmonson (ed.), Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing.
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