Editing Germanic umlaut (section)

=== Present stem Umlaut in strong verbs ===

A variety of umlaut occurs in the second and third person singular forms of the present tense of some [[Germanic strong verb]]s. For example, German {{lang|de|fangen}} ("to catch") has the present tense {{lang|de|ich fange, du fängst, er fängt}}. The verb {{lang|de|geben}} ("give") has the present tense {{lang|de|ich gebe, du gibst, er gibt}}, but the shift {{lang|de|e}}→{{lang|de|i}} would not be a normal result of umlaut in German. There are, in fact, two distinct phenomena at play here; the first is indeed umlaut as it is best known, but the second is older and occurred already in Proto-Germanic itself. In both cases, a following {{lang|gem-x-proto|i}} triggered a vowel change, but in Proto-Germanic, it affected only {{lang|gem-x-proto|e}}. The effect on back vowels did not occur until hundreds of years later, after the Germanic languages had already begun to split up: {{lang|gem-x-proto|*fą̄haną}}, {{lang|gem-x-proto|*fą̄hidi}} with no umlaut of {{lang|gem-x-proto|a}}, but {{lang|gem-x-proto|*gebaną}}, {{lang|gem-x-proto|*gibidi}} with umlaut of {{lang|gem-x-proto|e}}.