Mid front unrounded vowel

Mid front unrounded vowel
e̞
IPA number	302 430
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	e​̞
Unicode (hex)	U+0065 U+031E
X-SAMPA	e_o
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The mid front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. While there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the exact mid front unrounded vowel between close-mid [e] and open-mid [ɛ] (since no language is known to distinguish all three), some linguistics (especially Sinologists) use [E] in IPA transcriptions for this vowel. Otherwise diacritics are used (i.e. [e̞] or [ɛ̝], the former being more common).

Many languages, such as Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Greek and Turkish, have a mid front unrounded vowel that is phonetically distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. A number of dialects of English also have such a mid front vowel.

Although many languages have only one non-close, non-open front vowel, there is no predisposition for it being mid. Igbo, for example, has a close-mid [e], whereas Bulgarian has an open-mid [ɛ], even though these languages do not contrast said vowels with another mid front vowel.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ ə •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ ɐ •aɶ •ä •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
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• Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close-mid vowel and an open-mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
• Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Catalan	Northern Catalan	sec	[ˈse̞k]	'dry'	/ɛ/ and /e/ merge into [e̞] in these dialects. See Catalan phonology
	Alguerese
English	Yorkshire[1]	play	[ple̞ː]	'play'	See English phonology
Finnish[2]		menen	[me̞ne̞n]	'I (will) go'	See Finnish phonology
Greek		φαινόμενο/fainómeno	[fe̞ˈnome̞no]	'phenomenon'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hebrew[3]		חלק	[ˈχe̞le̞k]	'part'	Hebrew vowels are not shown in the script, see Niqqud and Modern Hebrew phonology
Hungarian[4]		hét	[he̞ːt]	'seven'	See Hungarian phonology
Japanese[5]		笑み	[é̞mì] (help·info)	'smile'	See Japanese phonology
Korean[6]		베개	[pe̞ˈɡɛ]	'pillow'	See Korean phonology
Romanian		fete	[ˈfe̞te̞]	'girls'	See Romanian phonology
Russian[7]		человек	[t͡ɕɪlɐˈvʲe̞k]	'person'	Occurs only after soft consonants. See Russian phonology
Serbo-Croatian[8]		жена/žena	[ʒe̞na]	'woman'	See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Spanish[9]		bebé	[be̞ˈβ̞e̞]	'baby'	See Spanish phonology
Swedish		häll	[he̞l]	'flat rock'	Many dialects pronounce words with short ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ä⟩ the same. See Swedish phonology
Tagalog		daliri	[dɐˈliɾe̞]	'finger'	See Tagalog phonology
Turkish[10]		ev	[e̞v]	'house'	See Turkish phonology

References

1. ^ Roca & Johnson (1999:179)
2. ^ Iivonen & Harnud (2005:60, 66)
3. ^ Laufer (1999:98)
4. ^ Szende (1994:92)
5. ^ Okada (1999:94)
6. ^ Lee (1999:121)
7. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:41)
8. ^ Landau et al. (1999:67)
9. ^ Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:256)
10. ^ Zimmer & Orgun (1999:155)

Bibliography

• Iivonen, Antti; Harnud, Huhe (2005), "Acoustical comparison of the monophthong systems in Finnish, Mongolian and Udmurt", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 59–71, doi:10.1017/S002510030500191X 
• Jones, Daniel; Dennis, Ward (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press 
• Landau, Ernestina; Lončarića, Mijo; Horga, Damir; Škarić, Ivo (1999), "Croatian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–69, ISBN 0-521-65236-7 
• Laufer, Asher (1999), "Hebrew", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, pp. 96–99 
• Lee, Hyun Bok (1999), "Korean", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 120–122, ISBN 0-521-63751-1 
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373 
• Okada, Hideo (1991). "Japanese". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94–96. doi:10.1017/S002510030000445X. 
• Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999), A Course in Phonology, Blackwell Publishing 
• Szende, Tamás (1994), "Illustrations of the IPA:Hungarian", Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 24 (2): 91–94 
• Zimmer, Karl; Orgun, Orhan (1999), "Turkish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–158, ISBN 0-521-65236-7