imala
/ɪˈmɑːlə/
imala noun: 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).
Noun
imala (usually uncountable, plural imalas)
- 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)
Forms of imala
| plural | imalas |
|---|---|
| alternative form | imaala |
| alternative form | imalah |
| alternative form | imaalah |
Origin of imala
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).
Words that rhyme with imala
Questions about imala
- What does imala mean?
- Imala means 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).
- What part of speech is imala?
- Imala is a noun.
- How do you pronounce imala?
- Imala is pronounced /ɪˈmɑːlə/.
- What is the plural of imala?
- The plural of imala is imalas.
Words near imala in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: imala (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “imala.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/imala. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.