A front rounded vowel is a particular 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 ...

that is both front and rounded. The front rounded vowels defined by the IPA include: * , a close front-rounded vowel (or "high front rounded vowel") * , a near-close front rounded vowel (or "near-high ...") * , a close-mid front rounded vowel (or "high-mid ...") * , a mid front rounded vowel * , an

open-mid front rounded vowel The open-mid front rounded vowel, or low-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is . The symbol œ is a lowercase ligature ...

(or "low-mid ...") * , an

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 ...

(or "low ...") Front rounded vowels are cross-linguistically relatively uncommon, but occur in a number of well-known languages, including French, German, Turkish, and

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

. Lip rounding is produced by bringing the corners of the lips together and protruding them forward. This is harder to do while producing low or open vowels since the lips are being stressed vertically. This may explain why low vowels are usually unrounded. Roundedness is usually associated with back vowels. This helps to reinforce the low-pitched formant frequencies associated with back vowels, making them more distinct from their front counterparts. The high vowel is the most common, while the low vowel is extremely rare. This is consistent with the general correlation between rounding and vowel height. Front rounded vowels usually occur in languages with vowel systems that distinguish a higher-than-average number of different vowel qualities. Typically, when a front rounded vowel occurs, the inventory of vowels includes an unrounded front vowel and a rounded back vowel of similar height. For example, many languages with , such as Kalmyk, Hungarian, or Turkish, also have and . Because of this, and what is known about many languages with front rounded vowels, front rounded vowels typically reflect a development from a vowel system that previously had fewer members.

Geographical distribution

Most languages with front rounded vowels are found in the more northern parts of

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

. Language families in which front-rounded vowels are common are: * Some

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

: ** Chinese varieties (e.g.

including

Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). ...

;

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

;

Wu Chinese , region = Shanghai, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, parts of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces; overseas and migrant communities , ethnicity = Wu , speakers = million , date = 2021 , ref = e27 , fa ...

) **

Standard Tibetan Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan is a standardized dialect of Tibetan spoken by the people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branched" ...

* Various

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

: ** Modern

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

(with the notable exceptions of the largest dialects of

Modern English Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England England is a Count ...

(although ːfor /uː/ is found in some accents in Northern England, and �ːis a common South African realization of /ɜː/),

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

, and many

German dialects German dialects are the various traditional local varieties of the German language. Though varied by region, those of the southern half of Germany beneath the Benrath line are dominated by the geographical spread of the High German consonant s ...

) **

Gallo-Romance languages The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the ''langues d'oïl'' and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader and variously encompass the Occitan or Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic o ...

(except Catalan), a subset of the

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

(e.g. French,

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

, Lombard) ** Albanian **

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

(with the notable exception of standard Uzbek which no longer retains

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

nor phonemic front rounded vowels) *

Mongolic languages The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in North Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this languag ...

(e.g. Kalmyk,

Dagur language The Dagur, Daghur, Dahur, or Daur language, is a Mongolic language, as well as a distinct branch of the Mongolic language family, and is primarily spoken by members of the Daur ethnic group. There is no written standard in use, although a Piny ...

, Inner Mongolian dialects; but not standard Khalkha) * Various

Uralic languages The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers ab ...

(e.g. Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian)

Development

Many of the Uralic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages that contain front rounded vowels also have

systems, such as rounding or backness harmony. The processes which bring about fronting or roundedness harmony may be important in introducing front rounded vowels into a language's inventory. Front rounded vowels can also develop independently of vowel harmony. In French, is the result of an older moving forward while remaining rounded. French re-developed by moving upwards. For example, the familiar second-person pronoun , pronounced , is spelled the same as its

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

source which had a back vowel, and the plural or polite second-person pronoun is pronounced with , but it derives from Latin which had a mid vowel. Some varieties of modern English are similarly fronting . In cases like these the creation of front rounded vowels is independent of adjacent sounds in the word. In other languages front rounded vowels evolved as previously back vowels became fronted by adjacent segments. For example, in German, back vowels became fronted when followed by high front vowels. The front vowels causing this change were often in inflectional or derivational endings and were then lost or changed into mid vowels. In the different

Chinese languages The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split b ...

, is often derived from . The tongue must be moved forward to pronounce the , so the can shift forward as well. If the is lost then the change from to is complete. Considering the different historical scenarios which can give rise to front rounded vowels, it is notable that they are relatively concentrated in a particular geographical region. It is likely that the presence of front rounded vowels in some languages can facilitate phonetically-motivated processes in other nearby languages.

References

{{IPA navigation Front vowels Rounded vowels