umlautとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

The logo of Matthäi, a large construction company in northern Germany. The second a has an umlaut (sense 4) over it.

Two umlaut diacritics (sense 4) over the as in two words.

Development of the umlaut (sense 4) in German handwriting.

Borrowed from German Umlaut in the 19 century, from um- or um (“around, re-, trans-”) + Laut (“sound”), from Old High German hlūt. More at loud.

発音

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈʊm.laʊt/, /ˈʌmlaʊt/
• (General American) IPA: /ˈʊm.laʊt/, /ˈumlaʊt/
• 韻: -aʊt
• ハイフネーション: um‧laut

名詞

umlaut (plural umlauts or umlaute)

1. (linguistics) An assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants.
   • 1997, Matthew Piepenburg, Time and the Maiden, →ISBN, page 62:

     In fits of concealed despair that went unnoticed even by those close enough to touch, Julien cursed the language of umlauts, eszetts, and gerunds.

   • 2008, Roy Blount, Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters:

     A tittle is more or less the same thing (the dot over an i, for instance), except that it can be traced back to Medieval Latin for a little mark over or under a letter, such as an accent ague or a cedilla. I don't know whether an umlaut is one or two tittles. Maybe it's a jot and a tittle side by side.

2. (linguistics) 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).
3. (linguistics) A vowel so assimilated.
4. (orthography) The diacritical mark ( ¨ ) placed over a vowel when it indicates a (rounded) front vowel
5. (informal, orthography) Synonym of diaeresis.

   "Naïve" takes an umlaut because it is pronounced as two syllables.

使用する際の注意点

• Although this symbol has the same form as the diaeresis, it has a different function and so in standard and technical usage these two terms are not interchangeable. The term for the diacritic mark, as opposed to its function, is trema.
• When spelling a German word out loud, one can say “(vowel) umlaut” or “umlauted (vowel)”. e.g. “o umlaut” or “umlauted o” (ö). (German practice is to say “o Umlaut”, or more commonly to pronounce the letters, so the name of "Ö" is [øː], just as "A" is [aː] and "B" is [beː].) In the North of Germany, "ä" and "e" are pronounced identically; therefore, one would tend to say "a Umlaut" to avoid confusion.
• In alphabetic orders, "ä, ö, ü" are treated as "a, o, u" or "ae, oe, ue" in German (so the word lügen comes directly after or before the word lugen). In other languages, such as Swedish, the umlaut letters may have their own position in the alphabet.
• The usual English plural is umlauts, but the form umlaute (after the German) has seen some use. It is quite rare, however.

同意語

• (orthography): trema
• (linguistics): vowel mutation

派生語

• heavy metal umlaut, metal umlaut

関連する語

• vowel harmony

動詞

umlaut (third-person singular simple present umlauts, present participle umlauting, simple past and past participle umlauted)

1. (transitive) To place an umlaut over (a vowel).
   • 1989, Elizabeth A. Edwards, “A Computer Column for All Seasons”, in Margaret S. Boone, editor, Practicing Anthropology, volume 11, number 2:

     We kept some of the foreign alphabet symbols such as the accented and umlauted vowels and Greek letters and used the rest of the space for more esoteric linguistic symbols such as "barred-l," and "engma."

2. (linguistics, transitive) To modify (a word) so that an umlaut is required in it.

   an umlauting vowel

   • 1980, Frederick B. Agard, The Genealogy of the French Language, published in Contributions to historical linguistics, →ISBN, page 222:

     These, together with (some) Romansh lects, belong to our West Rhaetian; the /ȫ/ also supported by two lects from the Ticino which by our criteria are NWIt, and by the partially umlauting lects of Lombardy which together with (some) Engadine lects belong to our East Rhaetian.

参考

• diaeresis, dieresis

Further reading

• umlaut on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

アナグラム

• mutual