The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

sound that occurs in most spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s, represented in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

by the symbol i. It is similar to the vowel sound in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

word ''meet''—and often called long-e in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

. Although in English this sound has additional

length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Inte ...

(usually being represented as ) and is not normally pronounced as a pure vowel (it is a slight

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

), some dialects have been reported to pronounce the phoneme as a pure sound. A pure sound is also heard in many other languages, such as

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, in words like ''chic''. The close front unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic n ...

. They

alternate Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * ''The Alternative'' (film), a 1978 Australian television film * ''The Alternative ...

with each other in certain languages, such as

, and in the

s of some languages, with the non-syllabic diacritic and are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound. Languages that use the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

commonly use the letter to represent this sound, though there are some exceptions: in

English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, ...

that letter is usually associated with (as in ''bite'') or (as in ''bit''), and is more commonly represented by , , , or , as in the words ''scene'', ''bean'', ''meet'', ''niece'', ''conceive''; (see

Great Vowel Shift The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...

Irish orthography Irish orthography is very etymological which allows the same written form to represent all dialects of Irish and remain regular. For example, ("head") may be read in Mayo and Ulster, in Galway, or in Munster. A spelling reform in the mid- ...

reflects both etymology and whether preceding consonants are broad or slender, so such combinations as , , and all represent .

Features

Occurrence

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Close Front Unrounded Vowel Close vowels Front vowels Unrounded vowels