[o]→[y]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 4/5

Close-mid back rounded vowel to Close front rounded vowel

The shift from the mid-back rounded vowel [o] to the high-front rounded vowel [y] involves both Raising and Fronting. This is most famously seen in the early stages of Germanic Umlaut (i-mutation), where a back vowel was both fronted and raised under the influence of a following high front sound.

Phonetic Effects

Fronting, Raising, I-mutation

Language Examples

Old English Germanic

gōs [oː] (goose)→gȳs [yː] (geese)— Old English long /o/ underwent i-mutation to /y/ in plural forms, later unrounding to /i/.

Scots Germanic

gōs [oː]→guse [yː]— In Scots and Northern English, long /o/ fronted to /y/ or /ø/ rather than raising to /u/ as in Southern English.

Old High German Germanic

gold→güldin— Umlaut of /o/ to /y/ in derivatives.

Related Transformations

Reverse

More Raising Shifts

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

Sources & References

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