User:Chrysophylax/Skājamāl/Phonology
Vowels
Proto-Germanic had four short vowels, five or six long vowels, and at least one "overlong" or "trimoric" vowel. The exact phonetic quality of the vowels is uncertain.
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Notes:
- /e/ could not occur in unstressed syllables except before /r/, where it may have been lowered to /ɑ/ already in late Proto-Germanic times.
- All nasal vowels except /ɑ̃ː/ and /ũː/ occurred word-finally. The long nasal vowels /ɑ̃ː/, /ĩː/ and /ũː/ occurred before /x/, and derived from earlier short vowels followed by /nx/.
PIE ə a o merged into PGmc a; PIE ā ō merged into PGmc ō. At the time of the merger, the vowels probably were [ɑ] and [ɑː], or perhaps [ɒ] and [ɒː]. Their timbres then differentiated by raising (and perhaps rounding) the long vowel to [ɔː]Template:Fix. It is known that the raising of ā to ō can not have occurred earlier than the earliest contact between Proto-Germanic speakers and the Romans. This can be verified by the fact that Latin Rōmānī later emerges in Gothic as Rumoneis (that is, Rūmōnīs). It is explained by Ringe that at the time of borrowing, the vowel matching closest in sound to Latin ā was a Proto-Germanic ā-like vowel (which later became ō). And since Proto-Germanic therefore lacked a mid(-high) back vowel, the closest equivalent of Latin ō was Proto-Germanic ū: Rōmānī > *Rūmānīz > *Rūmōnīz > Gothic Rumoneis.
A new ā was formed following the shift from ā to ō when intervocalic /j/ was lost in -aja- sequences. It was a rare phoneme, and occurred only in a handful of words, the most notable being the verbs of the third weak class. The agent noun suffix *-ārijaz (Modern English -er) was likely borrowed from Latin around or shortly after this time.
Diphthongs
The following diphthongs are known to have existed in Proto-Germanic:
- Short: /ɑu/, /ɑi/→/eː/, /eu/→/iu/, /iu/
- Long: /ɔːu/, /ɔːi/, (possibly /ɛːu/, /ɛːi/→/iː/)