Monophthongization is a
sound change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
by which a
diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
becomes a
monophthong
A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be ...
, a type of
vowel shift
A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language.
The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century. The Greek language also underwent a v ...
. It is also known as ungliding,
as diphthongs are also known as gliding vowels. In languages that have undergone monophthongization,
digraphs that formerly represented diphthongs now represent monophthongs. The opposite of monophthongization is
vowel breaking
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong.
Types
Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of ...
.
Arabic
Classical Arabic had two
diphthongs
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
, and , which are realised as the long vowels and in numerous
Arabic dialects
Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernaculars) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian P ...
. This monophthongization has further developed into and , respectively, in urban
North African dialects.
Some notable exceptions to this monophthongization are some rural Lebanese dialects, which preserve the original pronunciations of some of the diphthongs. Other urban Lebanese dialects, such as in
Beirut
Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...
, use the mid vowels and . Another exception is the
Sfax
Sfax ( ; , ) is a major port city in Tunisia, located southeast of Tunis. The city, founded in AD849 on the ruins of Taparura, is the capital of the Sfax Governorate (about 955,421 inhabitants in 2014), and a Mediterranean port. Sfax has a ...
dialect of
Tunisian Arabic
Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian (), is a Varieties of Arabic, variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its 13 million speakers as ''Tūnsi'', "Tunisian" or ''Maghrebi Arabic, Derja'' (; meaning "common or everyday dialect") t ...
, which is known mostly for keeping the Classical Arabic diphthongs and . Some varieties might maintain the diphthong for words recently
borrowed from
Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages also the variety of spoken Arabic that ...
or use them in
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such ...
.
English
Some
English sounds that may be perceived by native speakers as single vowels are in fact diphthongs; an example is the vowel sound in ''pay'', pronounced . However, in some dialects (e.g.
Scottish English
Scottish English is the set of varieties of the English language spoken in Scotland. The transregional, standardised variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English (SSE). Scottish Standard English may be defined ...
) is a monophthong .
Some dialects of English make monophthongs from former diphthongs. For instance,
Southern American English
Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, primarily by White Southerners and increasingly concentrated in more rural areas ...
tends to realize the diphthong as in ''eye'' as a long monophthong ,
a feature known as /aj/ ungliding or /ay/ ungliding. Monophthongization is also one of the most widely used and distinguishing features of
African American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, voca ...
.
Smoothing
Smoothing is a monophthongization of a closing diphthong (most commonly ) before a vowel that can occur in
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...
and other accents of English. (Some have called this "levelling", but this is rarely used because it may be confused with
dialect levelling
Dialect levelling (or leveling in American English) is an overall reduction in the variation or diversity of a dialect's features when in contact with one or more other dialects. This can come about through assimilation, mixture, and merging o ...
.) For example, ''chaos'', pronounced without smoothing, becomes with smoothing. Smoothing applies particularly readily to and when preceding , hence for ''fire'' and for ''tower'', or with the syllabicity loss of , . The centring diphthong deriving from smoothing and syllabicity loss may further undergo monophthongization, realizing ''fire'' and ''tower'' as or , similar or identical to ''far, tar''; unlike smoothing, this type of monophthongization (which Wells terms "monophthonging") does not require a following vowel.
Smoothing can occur across word boundaries in the same conditions (closing diphthong + vowel), as in ''way out'', ''they eat'', ''go off''.
Old English
Indo-Aryan languages
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit, also simply referred as the Vedic language, is the most ancient known precursor to Sanskrit, a language in the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is atteste ...
diphthongs and later monophthongize to and respectively in Classical
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, but these may remain as diphthongs under sandhi rules.
In
Hindustani, the pure vowels and are written with the letters for the diphthongs ''ai'' and ''au'' in
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
and related alphabets. The vowel sequences and exist in Hindi, but are written as ''āi'' and ''āu'', with long initial vowels.
German
The so-called early ''frühneuhochdeutsche Monophthongierung'' (monophthongization in the earliest stages of New High German) is particularly important in today's Standard German.
[Waterman, J.T., ''A history of the German language'', 1966.] It changed the diphthongs ''ie'' , ''uo'' and ''üe'' to respectively ''ie'' , ''u'' and ''ü'' :
Before 11th century > nowadays:
* liebe > liebe
* > gute
* brüeder > Brüder
The digraph "ie" has kept its spelling despite monophthongization.
The New High German monophthongization started in the 11th century in the center of the German-speaking area.
Bavarian and
Alemannic dialects in the south did not undergo the monophthongization changes and thus these dialects remain in an older language state.
Greek
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
underwent monophthongization at many points during its history. For instance, the diphthongs monophthongized to around the 5th century BC, and the diphthong monophthongized to in the
Koine Greek
Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the koiné language, common supra-regional form of Greek language, Greek spoken and ...
period. For more information, see and
Koine Greek phonology
The Greek language underwent pronunciation changes during the Koine Greek period, from about 300 BC to 400 AD. At the beginning of the period, the pronunciation was close to Classical Greek, while at the end it was almost identical to Modern Gre ...
.
French
French underwent monophthongization and so the digraph , which formerly represented a diphthong, represents the sound or in
Modern French
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in ...
. Similarly, the digraph and trigraph represent the monophthong due to the same process.
Korean
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean
**Korean dialects
**See also: North–South differences in t ...
underwent monophthongization two times─18th century, and 20th century. Their common point is that all of the monophthongized vowels were falling diphthongs. In 18th century, monophthongized to . Similarly, in 20th century monophthongized to .
See also
*
''Idea''-smoothing
*
Fusion (phonetics)
*
Synaeresis
In linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phone ...
*
Vowel breaking
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong.
Types
Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of ...
*
Monophthongization of diphthongs in Proto-Slavic Monophthongization of diphthongs is a Proto-Slavic sound change in which diphthongs turn into vowels. It is one of the key events in the chronology of the Proto-Slavic language. The monophthongization of diphthongs restructured the Proto-Slavic lang ...
References
{{Authority control
Vowel shifts