The open-mid front rounded vowel, or low-mid front rounded 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 the sound is . The symbol
Ĺ“ is a lowercase
ligature of the letters
o and
e. The letter , a
small capital version of the ligature, is used for a different vowel sound: the
open front rounded vowel.
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 (ward), Rushey Green and Catford South Ward (electoral subdivi ...
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 al ...
, 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