imala

发音

/ɪˈmɑːlə/

词形变化

imalas 复数 imalas

别名

imaala imalah imaalah

释义与例句

n.
  1. 1.

    a sound change in Arabic by which the vowels /a/, /aː/ are fronted in certain phonetic environments (possibly creating new phonemes, notably in Maltese and to a lesser degree in some dialects)

    不可数 语言学

词源

From Arabic إمالة (ʔimāla, literally “inclination”). The earliest form of the process, described by the Arab grammarians, was conditioned on the existence of an /i/ before or after the /a/ (somewhat similarly to Germanic umlaut). Hence the /a/ was said to “incline” towards the /i/. In many modern dialects, however, imala is only conditioned by surrounding consonants, and it is typically hindered by certain adjacent consonants (especially emphatics).

来源：wiktionary