Imāla

Imāla (also imālah; Arabic: إمالة, lit. 'inclination') is a phenomenon in Arabic comprising the fronting and raising of Old Arabic /aː/ toward /iː/ or /eː/, and the old short /a/ toward /i/. Imāla and the factors conditioning its occurrence were described for the first time by Sibawayh. According to as-Sirafi and Ibn Jinni (10th century), the vowel of the imāla was pronounced somewhere between /a/ and /i/, suggesting a realization of [e].

Sibawayh primarily discusses imāla as a shift of /aː/ to /eː/ in the vicinity of /i/ or /iː/, an allophonic variation that can be characterized as umlaut or i-mutation. Additionally, Sibawayh's imāla subsumes occurrences of a phonemic vowel /eː/ resulting from the collapse of Old Arabic triphthongs. For this reason, not all instances of imāla can be characterized as a vowel shift from an original /aː/ towards the /iː/.

Imāla was not a general phenomenon, occurring only in some of the old dialects. Yet, the grammarians regarded it as a legitimate phenomenon from the normative point of view when it occurred in certain conditionings. In the context of Arabic dialectology, the term imāla is also used to describe a variety of phenomena involving mid-vowels in place of the Standard Arabic low-vowel. Imāla also features in several qirāʾāt (styles of recitation) of the Quran.