Proto-Uralic word roots have been subject to particularly heavy reduction in the Permic languages. • Original geminates *pp, *tt, *kk were reduced to single voiceless stops *p, *t, *k. • Between vowels, original single *p, *t, *k as well as *w and *x were lost entirely. • Second-syllable vowels were lost entirely. This was obscured in Udmurt by adding
-ы to certain words. (PU *lumi "snow" → Udm
лымы vs PU *lämi "broth" → Udm
лым ). • The sibilants *s, *ś, *š have remained distinct from each other in all positions, but were voiced to *z, *ž, *ź between voiced sounds. • Consonant clusters were largely simplified: in particular nasal + stop/affricate clusters yield voiced stops/affricates, and stop + sibilant clusters yield voiceless sibilants. A peculiarity of Permic is the occurrence of the voiced consonants such as *b, *g word-initially even in inherited vocabulary, apparently a development from original PU voiceless consonants. The Proto-Permic consonant inventory is reconstructed as: This inventory is retained nearly unchanged in the modern-day Permic languages. Komi has merged original into and undergone a word-final a change → in many dialects, while Udmurt has changed word-initially → or . is retained only in some Udmurt dialects; in other Permic varieties it has become next to
back vowels, next to central vowels, next to
front vowels. In later Russian loanwords, the consonants may occur. The consonant was marginal and occurred only word-initially or after a word-initial , generally traceable to diphthongization of the close back vowel of the 2nd series. An exceptional word is the numeral "six", , which in Komi is the only native word root with an initial cluster. Literary
Komi and literary
Udmurt both possess a seven-vowel system . These are however not related straightforwardly, and numerous additional vowels are required for Proto-Permic, perhaps as many as 15 altogether. The reconstruction of Proto-Permic vocalism and its development from
Proto-Uralic has always been a puzzling topic, for which there are several models. There is general agreement on the existence of two series of
close vowels, one of which results in modern in literary Udmurt and literary Komi-Zyryan, the other in correspondences of Udmurt to Komi (but in the
Komi-Yazva language). Proposed distinguishing factors for these include length (),
tenseness () and
height (). Here is the vowel table used in Wiktionary: ==Morphophonology==