Open front rounded vowel

Open front rounded vowel
Open front rounded vowel
ɶ
IPA number 312
Encoding
Entity (decimal) ɶ
Unicode (hex) U+0276
X-SAMPA &
Kirshenbaum a.
Sound

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The open front rounded vowel, or low front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, not confirmed to be phonemic in any spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɶ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is &. The symbol ɶ is a small caps rendition of Œ. Note that œ, the lowercase version of the ligature, is used for the open-mid front rounded vowel.

The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low", and these are the only terms found in introductory textbooks on phonetics such as those by Peter Ladefoged.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back
Close
Blank vowel trapezoid.svg
iy
ɨʉ
ɯu
ɪʏ
ʊ
eø
ɘɵ
ɤo
ɛœ
ɜɞ
ʌɔ
æ
aɶ
ä
ɑɒ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
This table contains phonetic symbols. They may not display correctly in some browsers (Help).

IPA help • IPA key • chart • Loudspeaker.svg chart with audio • view
  • Its vowel height is open, also known as low, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth – that is, as low as possible in the mouth.
  • 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 rounded, which means that the lips are rounded rather than relaxed or spread.

Occurrence

[ɶ] is not confirmed to exist as a phoneme in any language. A phoneme generally transcribed by this symbol is reported from the Amstetten dialect of Austro-Bavarian German. It is the rounded equivalent of /æ/, not of open /a/, and so would be more narrowly transcribed as [œ̞] or [ɶ̝]. However, the vowel formants place Amstetten /æ/ and /œ/ one third of the way between /a/ and /i/, matching the IPA definition for open-mid vowels.

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Danish børn [bɶ̝ɐ̯n] 'children' See Danish phonology
French Acadian honneur [ɔnɶ̝ʁ] 'honour' Allophone of /œ/ before /ʁ/. See French phonology
Some Montreal speakers
Austro-Bavarian Amstetten dialect Seil [sɶ̝ː] 'rope' See German phonology
Swedish hört [hɶ̝ːʈ] 'heard' (supine) See Swedish phonology

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