Magánhangzóharmóniák

Magánhangzóharmóniák, or vowel harmony, is a phonological phenomenon in which vowels within a word are required to be similar in certain characteristics, such as frontness or backness, rounding or unrounding, and height. This means that if a word contains a front vowel, any other vowels in that word must also be front vowels, and similarly for back vowels. The same principle applies to rounded and unrounded vowels, and sometimes to vowel height as well.

This feature is prominent in many agglutinative languages, particularly in the Uralic language family, which includes Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian, as well as in Turkic languages like Turkish and Azerbaijani. In these languages, suffixes often change their form to match the vowel harmony of the root word they are attached to. For example, in Hungarian, the plural suffix can appear as -ok or -ek, depending on whether the last vowel of the noun is back or front.

The specific rules of vowel harmony can vary significantly between languages. Some languages exhibit a strict front-back harmony, while others also incorporate rounding or height harmony. There can also be exceptions to the rules, such as in loanwords or certain grammatical contexts. Understanding vowel harmony is crucial for accurate pronunciation and grammar in languages that possess it, as it affects the realization of suffixes and the overall phonetic structure of words.