The mid front 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 that is 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. There is no dedicated 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 the exact mid front unrounded vowel between close-mid and open-mid , but it is normally written . If precision is required, diacritics may be used, such as or (the former, indicating
lowering, being more common). In
Sinology
Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization p ...
and
Koreanology, is sometimes used, for example in the
Zhengzhang Shangfang reconstructions or in
Chao Yuen Ren
Yuen Ren Chao (Chinese: 趙元任; 3 November 189225 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao ...
''Grammar of Spoken Chinese.''
For many of the languages that have only one
phonemic
A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...
front unrounded vowel in the mid-vowel area (neither close nor open), the vowel is pronounced as a true mid vowel and is phonetically distinct from either a close-mid or open-mid vowel. Examples are
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
,
Spanish,
Romanian,
Japanese,
Turkish,
Finnish,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
,
Hejazi Arabic
Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (HA) (, Hejazi Arabic: , ), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a Varieties of Arabic, variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken i ...
,
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
and
Korean (
Seoul dialect). A number of dialects of
English also have such a mid front vowel. However, there is no general predisposition.
Igbo and
Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian, or simply as Masri, is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic variety in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. The esti ...
, for example, have a close-mid , and
Bulgarian has an open-mid , but none of these languages have another phonemic mid front vowel.
Kensiu, spoken in Malaysia and Thailand, is claimed to be unique in having true-mid vowels that are phonemically distinct from both close-mid and open-mid vowels, without differences in other parameters such as backness or roundedness.
[Bishop, N. (1996)]
A preliminary description of Kensiw (Maniq) phonology
''Mon-Khmer Studies
''Mon-Khmer Studies'' was an academic journal that focused on Mon-Khmer languages. It was established in 1964 and ceased publication in 2016. From 1992 onwards, it was published by Mahidol University and SIL International
SIL Global (formerl ...
'' 25.
Features
Occurrence
Notes
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External links
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{{IPA navigation
Mid vowels
Front vowels
Unrounded vowels