The open-mid front rounded vowel, or low-mid front rounded 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 (leng ...
sound, used in some
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. The symbol 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 ...
that represents the sound is . The symbol
œ is a lowercase
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
of the letters
o and
e. The sound , a
small capital version of the ligature, is used for a distinct vowel sound: the
open front rounded vowel
The (near) open front rounded vowel, or (near) low front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound that has not been confirmed to be phonemic in any spoken language. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ...
.
Open-mid front compressed vowel
The open-mid front compressed vowel is typically transcribed in IPA simply as , which is the convention used in this article. There is no dedicated
IPA diacritic for compression. However, the compression of the lips can be shown by the letter as (simultaneous and labial compression) or ( modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic may also be used with a rounded vowel letter as an ''ad hoc'' symbol, but 'spread' technically means unrounded.
Features
Occurrence
Because front rounded vowels are assumed to have compression, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some of the following may actually have protrusion.
Open-mid front protruded vowel
Catford
Catford is a district in south east London, England, and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Lewisham. It is southwest of Lewisham itself, mostly in the Rushey Green and Catford South wards. The population of Catford, includ ...
notes that most languages with rounded front and back vowels use distinct types of labialization, protruded back vowels and compressed front vowels. However, a few, such as
Scandinavian languages
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...
, have protruded front vowels. One Scandinavian language, Swedish, even contrasts the two types of rounding in front vowels (see
near-close front rounded vowel, with Swedish examples of both types of rounding).
As there are no diacritics in the IPA to distinguish protruded and compressed rounding, an old diacritic for labialization, , will be used here as an ''ad hoc'' symbol for protruded front vowels. Another possible transcription is or (an open-mid front vowel modified by endolabialization), but it could be misread as a diphthong.
Acoustically, the sound is "between" the more typical compressed open-mid front vowel and the unrounded open-mid front vowel .
Features
Occurrence
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Open-Mid Front Rounded Vowel
Open-mid vowels
Front vowels
Rounded vowels