The close-mid central unrounded vowel, or high-mid central unrounded vowel, is a type of
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
sound used in some spoken
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
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 standard written representation ...
that represents this sound is . This is a mirrored letter e and should not be confused with the
schwa , which is a turned e. It was added to the IPA in 1993; before that, this vowel was transcribed (Latin small letter
e with diaeresis, not the Cyrillic small letter
yo (Ñ‘). Certain older sources
[For example .] transcribe this vowel .
The letter may be used with a
lowering diacritic , to denote the
mid central unrounded vowel.
Conversely, , the symbol for the mid central vowel may be used with a raising diacritic to denote the close-mid central unrounded vowel, although that is more accurately written with an additional unrounding diacritic to explicitly denote the lack of rounding (the canonical value of IPA is undefined for rounding).
Features
Occurrence
Notes
References
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External links
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{{IPA navigation
Close-mid vowels
Central vowels
Unrounded vowels