A retracted vowel is a

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 in which the body or root of the tongue is pulled backward and downward into the pharynx. The most retracted cardinal vowels are , which are so far back that the epiglottis may press against the back pharyngeal wall, and . Raised or front vowels may be partially retracted, for example by an adjacent

uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not ...

or by vowel harmony based on retracted tongue root. In both cases, , for example, may be retracted to . Retracted vowels and raised vowels constitute the traditional, but articulatorily inaccurate, category of

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

References

*{{Cite web, url=https://www.mcgill.ca/mcgwpl/files/mcgwpl/moisik2012.pdf, title=The Epilaryngeal Articulator: A New Conceptual Tool for Understanding Lingual-Laryngeal Contrasts, last1=Moisik, first1=Scott, journal=, volume=, pages=, via=, last2=Czaykowska-Higgins, first2=Ewa, last3=Esling, first3=John H., year=2012 Vowels