Ablaut Reduplication in English

What sounds weird about the following terms? Flop-flip. Hop-hip. Tac-tic-toe. Tock tick. They don’t follow something called ablaut reduplication. This makes them sound really weird to English speakers. So what exactly is ablaut reduplication and what are some examples we use in everyday life? Keep reading to find out!

What is ablaut reduplication?

A lot like how English has a set order of adjectives, which we’ve written about before, it also has a set order for vowels in words that repeat with similar sounds. Much like the order of adjectives, this has a set order that a lot of English speakers don’t know about. They say it because it just sounds right. Ablaut reduplications follow two linguistic concepts, ablaut and (you guessed it!) reduplication.

Ablaut is a pattern of vowel shifts. This can be a change in how things are pronounced over time, or a change in verb tense or a noun number. For example, stink, stank, stunk or goose/geese.

The order of vowels follows the placement of the vowels in the mouth when you’re saying them out loud, going from the front of the mouth to the back.

Reduplication is repeating part of a word for effect. This could be telling a young child “no-no” instead of just no. Or saying someone is “RICH rich” to say they’re really rich.

For ablaut reduplication, the order of vowels is i-a-o. When these two linguistic forces combine, you get phrases like flip flop, hip hop, or tic-tac-toe. You find this all the time in English.

Here are some examples:

TikTok

KitKat

Chit-chat

Wishy-washy

Flip-flop

Hip-hop

Tick-tock

Tic-tac-toe

Tip-top

Dribs and drabs

Knick-knack

Zig-zag

Bing, bang, boom

Live, laugh, love

Can you think of any other examples? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!