imala

Etymology
From. The earliest form of the process, described by the Arab grammarians, was conditioned on the existence of an before or after the  (somewhat similarly to Germanic umlaut). Hence the was said to “incline” towards the. In most modern dialects, however, imala is a default development, only hindered by certain adjacent consonants (especially emphatics).

Noun

 * 1)  a sound change in Arabic by which the vowels  are fronted in certain phonetic environments (possibly creating new phonemes, notably in Maltese and to a lesser degree in some dialects)