Metaphony

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In

For more discussion, see the article on vowel harmony.

There are two types:

• Progressive (or left-to-right) metaphony, in which a vowel towards the beginning of a word influences a subsequent vowel.
• Regressive (or right-to-left) metaphony, in which a vowel towards the end of the word influences a preceding vowel.

Metaphony is closely related to some other linguistic concepts:

• vowel backness). Most commonly, the triggering vowel is in the first syllable of the word (i.e., this is a type of progressive metaphony), as in Turkish, Finnish or Hungarian. In some cases, however, the triggering vowel is in the last syllable, typically a suffix, as in many varieties of Andalusian Spanish
  .
• diachronic type operating in the history of a language. The term "umlaut" is found especially in the Germanic languages (see Germanic umlaut). In some other languages, other terms are used instead for the same process (e.g. affection in Old Irish, simply metaphony in the Romance languages
  ).