Vowel harmony

· from English

What is vowel harmony?

Vowel harmony is a rule that vowels within a word (or word plus suffixes) must come from the same class, such as all front or all back.

Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian choose suffix vowels to match the stem. Middle Korean had a full vowel harmony system; modern Korean keeps it in verb endings (아 a after bright vowels, 어 eo elsewhere) and in ideophones, where bright vowels sound light and dark vowels sound heavy.

Examples

Korean 잡아요 jabayo (catch) vs 먹어요 meogeoyo (eat); Korean 졸졸 joljol (trickling) vs 줄줄 juljul (streaming); Mongolian plural -ууд/-үүд

Kungfucius says: Vowels that refuse to sit next to anyone outside their clique.