Explore Umlaut through 10+ example sentences from English, with an explanation of the meaning and related words like diaeresis or diacritic. Ideal for language learners, writers and word enthusiasts.
Umlaut meaning
- An assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants.
- The umlaut process (as above) that occurred historically in Germanic languages whereby back vowels became front vowels when followed by syllable containing a front vocoid (e.g. Germanic lūsiz > Old English lȳs(i) > Modern English lice).
- A vowel so assimilated.
Using Umlaut
- The main meaning on this page is: An assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants. | The umlaut process (as above) that occurred historically in Germanic languages whereby back vowels became front vowels when followed by syllable containing a front vocoid (e.g. Germanic lūsiz > Old English lȳs(i) > Modern English lice). | A vowel so assimilated.
- Useful related words include: dieresis, diaeresis, diacritical mark, diacritic.
- In the example corpus, umlaut often appears in combinations such as: the umlaut, of umlaut, umlaut as.
Context around Umlaut
- Average sentence length in these examples: 23.4 words
- Position in the sentence: 2 start, 12 middle, 6 end
- Sentence types: 20 statements, 0 questions, 0 exclamations
Corpus analysis for Umlaut
- In this selection, "umlaut" usually appears in the middle of the sentence. The average example has 23.4 words, and this corpus slice is mostly made up of statements.
- Around the word, use, vowel, german, diacritic, standard and processes stand out and add context to how "umlaut" is used.
- Recognizable usage signals include added the umlaut a modifier and an under umlaut and under. That gives this page its own corpus information beyond isolated example sentences.
- By corpus frequency, "umlaut" sits close to words such as abstention, actuarial and admonition, which helps place it inside the broader word index.
Example types with umlaut
The same corpus examples are grouped by length and sentence type, making it easier to see the contexts in which the word appears:
Here it can be combined with umlaut marks in two cases. (11 words)
In the case of u-umlaut, this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. (12 words)
Both of these phonations have dedicated IPA diacritics, an under-umlaut and under-tilde. (14 words)
U-umlaut U-umlaut is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. (35 words)
Für "for" is a special case; it is an umlauted form of vor "before", but other historical developments changed the expected ö into ü. In this case, the ü marks a genuine but irregular umlaut. (35 words)
Also, from German, is über, which means "over" or "above"; it usually appears as a prefix attached to adjectives, and is frequently written without the umlaut over the u. Van de Velde & Meuleman. (33 words)
Example sentences (20)
As a result of this relatively sparse occurrence of umlaut, standard Dutch does not use umlaut as a grammatical marker.
However, in a small number of words, a vowel affected by i-umlaut is not marked with the umlaut diacritic because its origin not obvious.
U-umlaut U-umlaut is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse.
Lower-case uber (perhaps I should have added the umlaut) – a modifier whose use long preceded the appearance of the taxi-esque company.
Also, from German, is über, which means "over" or "above"; it usually appears as a prefix attached to adjectives, and is frequently written without the umlaut over the u. Van de Velde & Meuleman.
A number of umlaut processes occurred in the Proto-Tocharian period, which tended to increase the number of rounded vowels.
As in Swedish and Estonian, these are regarded as individual letters, rather than vowel + umlaut combinations (as happens in German).
Because of the grammatical importance of such pairs, the German umlaut diacritic was developed, making the phenomenon very visible.
Both of these phonations have dedicated IPA diacritics, an under-umlaut and under-tilde.
Compare Old English ġiest "guest", which shows umlaut, and Old High German gast, which does not, both from Proto-Germanic *gastiz.
Consequently, these dialects also make grammatical use of umlaut to form plurals and diminutives, much as most other modern Germanic languages do.
Due to this history, "ä", "ö" and "ü" can be written as "ae", "oe" and "ue" respectively, if the umlaut letters are not available.
For instance, in German where two words differ only by an umlaut, the word without it is sorted first in German dictionaries (e.g. schon and then schön, or fallen and then fällen).
Für "for" is a special case; it is an umlauted form of vor "before", but other historical developments changed the expected ö into ü. In this case, the ü marks a genuine but irregular umlaut.
Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu/nü and lu/lü, which are then distinguished by an umlaut.
Germanic actively derived causative weak verbs from ordinary strong verbs by applying a suffix, which later caused umlaut, to a past tense form.
Guð hialpi and hans (OG) The OEN original text above is transliterated according to traditional scholarly methods, wherein u-umlaut is not regarded in runic Old East Norse.
Here it can be combined with umlaut marks in two cases.
In the case of u-umlaut, this entails labialization of unrounded vowels.
In the more southern languages (Old High German, Old Dutch, Old Saxon), forms that lost -i often show no umlaut, but in the more northern languages (Old English, Old Frisian), the forms do.
Common combinations with umlaut
These word pairs occur most frequently in English texts:
- the umlaut 7×
- of umlaut 4×
- umlaut as 3×
- umlaut and 3×
- umlaut to 3×
- an umlaut 3×
- umlaut diacritic 2×
- umlaut the 2×
- umlaut marks 2×
- by umlaut 2×