imala

Meanings

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)

Etymology

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).