The initial sound or group of sounds at the beginning of a word, especially as studied in phonetics and historical linguistics.
From German 'Anlaut,' composed of 'an-' (on/at) and 'Laut' (sound). This linguistic term was developed by German philologists studying sound changes across language families.
Linguists use 'anlaut' to track how languages changed—for instance, the German 'k' sound at the beginning of words changed in English (King vs. Köhn), revealing how populations migrated and mixed!
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