Kensonerezh vogalennek

Diwar Wikipedia, an holloueziadur digor

Ar pennad-mañ n'eo ket peurechu c'hoazh ; ma fell deoc'h labourat warnañ deuit da welout ha lakait hoc'h ali e pajenn ar gaozeadenn.

Ar c'hensonnelezh vogalennek (saozneg Vowel harmony) (pe metafoniezh) a zo un doare $assimilation long-distance.

[kemmañ] Displegadur

Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation does not involve adjacent sounds but rather involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). For example, a vowel at the beginning of word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation sometimes occurs across the entire word.

The term vowel harmony is used in two different senses:

both progressive (left-to-right, moving from the beginning toward the end of a word) and regressive (right-to-left, moving from the end toward the beginning of a word) vowel harmony
only progressive harmony (as distinct from umlaut, which is regressive harmony)

Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as

vowel height (i.e. high, mid, or low vowels)
vowel backness (i.e. front, central, or back vowels)
vowel roundedness (i.e. rounded or unrounded)
tongue root position (i.e. ±ATR)
nasalization (i.e. oral or nasal)

E meur a yezh a ra gant ar c'hensonnelezh vogalennek e vez renket ar vogalennoù e klasoù pe strolladoù, d.s. vogalennoù ront, vogalennoù uhel, h.a. A-wechoù e van vogalennoù hep beza´renket e klas ebet, neutral eo ar re se neuze.

Vowel harmony appears in almost all Uralic and Altaic languages. Some have speculated that the vowel harmony of the northwestern Finno-Ugric languages influenced the phonological phenomenon of umlaut that most of the living Germanic languages display.

Vowel harmony occurs in many other languages, such as

Akan languages,
several Bantu languages,
Coeur d’Alene,
Coosan languages,
Dusun languages,
Maiduan languages,
Nez Perce,
Nilotic languages,
Takelma,
Telugu,
Utian languages, and
Yokutsan languages.

[kemmañ] Skwer - ar finneg

A Venn diagram of the Finnish vowel harmony system.The front vowels are in blue, neutral in green and back in yellow

Front	ä	ö	y
Neutral	e	i
Back	a	o	u

In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels -- front, back, and neutral, where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings — but not enclitics — have only archphonemic vowels, which are realized as either A, U, O or Ä, Y, Ö, but never both, inside a single word. From vowel harmony it follows that the initial syllable of each single (non-compound) word controls the frontness or backness of the entire word. Non-initially, the neutral vowels are transparent to and unaffected by vowel harmony. In the initial syllable:

a back vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with back (or neutral) vowels, e.g. pos+ahta+(t)a → posahtaa
a front vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with front (or neutral) vowels, e.g. räj+ahta+(t)a → räjähtää.
a neutral vowel acts like a front vowel, but does not control the frontness or backness of the word: if there are back vowels in non-initial syllables, the word acts like it began with back vowels, even if they come from derivational endings, e.g. sih+ahta+(ta) → sihahtaa cf. sih+ise+(t)a → sihistä

For example:

kaura begins with back vowel → kauralla
kuori begins with back vowel → kuorella
sieni begins without back vowels → sienellä (not *sienella)
käyrä begins without back vowels → käyrällä
tuote begins with back vowels → tuotteeseensa
kerä begins with a neutral vowel → kerällä
kera begins with a neutral vowel, but has a noninitial back vowel → keralla

Some dialects that have a sound change opening diphthong codas also permit archphonemic vowels in the initial syllable. For example, standard 'ie' is reflected as 'ia' or 'iä', controlled by noninitial syllables, in the Tampere dialect, e.g. tiä ← tie but miakka ← miekka.

Vowel harmony is a grammaticalized feature of phonotactics, thus it may not work as expected from pure phonology, as evidenced by tuotteeseensa (not *tuotteeseensä). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix -nsa, grammatically it is preceded by a back vowel-controlled word. As shown in the examples, neutral vowels make the system unsymmetrical, as they are front vowels phonologically, but leave the front/back control to any grammatical front or back vowels. There is little or no change in the actual vowel quality of the neutral vowels.

As a consequence, Finnish speakers often have problems with pronouncing foreign words which do not obey vowel harmony. For example, olympia is pronounced olumpia. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e.g. chattailla/chättäillä ) or ill-standardized (e.g. polymeeri, autoritäärinen, which violate vowel harmony). Where a foreign word violates vowel harmony by not using front vowels because it begins with a neutral vowel, then last syllable counts. For example, Wikipediassa — the initial syllable -pe- of the second word would require the final vowel to be -ä, but because it isn't, the process degrammaticalizes, becoming pure phonotactics.

With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example, syyskuu ("autumn month" i.e. September) has both u and y, but it consists of two words syys and kuu, and declines syys·kuu·ta (not *syyskuutä).