Re: TERMS: Umlaut-Ablaut

On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Raymond Brown wrote:

>Welsh has many examples of both i-umlaut & a-umlaut; Old Norse has example=
s
>of i-umlaut & u-umlaut (Does it also have a-umlaut?  I wasn't aware of it)
>- i.e. vowels modified by anticpating a final -a or -u which was
>subsequently lost.
It does: horn from Germanic *hurna-; verr (man) from IE *viro- (this
IE o becomes a in Germanic if I remember right, the a mutates the i);
nidhr (below) is unumlautted, nedhan (from below) is.  All exist in
English as well: horn, were(wolf), neath and nethen (from neothan).

>
>But - 'umlaut' is often used also to describe the two dots placed over
>modified vowels in German (I've even heard the 'e' in the French 'No=EBl'
>called 'e-umlaut'!).  In that usage, of course, we have "a-umlaut",
>"o-umlaut" & "u-umlaut" in German - but they are _all_ examples of i-umlau=
t.

I'm glad I learnt them as diereses!

>
>I'd prefer to called the written forms 'umlauted a', 'umlauted o' etc. -
>but I guess purists would object to putting an English suffix onto a Germa=
n
>word   :=3D(
I might think they would more wonder "which kind of umlautted a?  I or
u?"  Though here I suppose you're really talking about the a with
dieresis?

Padraic.

>Ray.