The oldest HG documents that are preserved to us show a variety of unstressed final vowels: -i, -e, -a, -o, -u, and the diphthong -iu, e.g. nom. sg. hirti ‘Hirt’, dat. sg. tage ‘(dem) Tage’, nom. sg. zunga ‘Zunge’, haso ‘Hase’, fridu ‘Frieden’, guotiu ‘gute’ (fem.). At a later period most documents show instead of these full vowels only a single reduced vowel that is written -e: hirte, tage, zunge, hase, vride, guote (MG only; the UG form is guotiu). The same change can also be observed where the unstressed vowel is followed by a final consonant: early nom. acc. sg. neut. guotaz ‘gutes’ appears later as guotez, etc.