Puneet Varma (Editor)

Close mid back rounded vowel

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IPA number
  
307

Unicode (hex)
  
U+006F

Kirshenbaum
  
o

Entity (decimal)
  
o

X-SAMPA
  
o

Close-mid back rounded vowel

The close-mid back rounded vowel, or high-mid back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨o⟩.

Contents

The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low".

Close-mid back protruded vowel

The close-mid back protruded vowel is the most common variant of the close-mid back rounded vowel. It is typically transcribed in IPA simply as ⟨o⟩, and that is the convention used in this article. As there is no dedicated diacritic for protrusion in the IPA, the symbol for the close-mid back rounded vowel with an old diacritic for labialization, ⟨  ̫⟩, can be used as an ad hoc symbol ⟨o̫⟩ for the close-mid back protruded vowel. Another possible transcription is ⟨oʷ⟩ or ⟨ɤʷ⟩ (a close-mid back vowel modified by endolabialization), but this could be misread as a diphthong.

Features

  • Its vowel height is close-mid, also known as high-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel (a high vowel) and a mid vowel.
  • Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
  • Its roundedness is protruded, which means that the corners of the lips are drawn together, and the inner surfaces exposed.

    • Close-mid back compressed vowel

    There is no dedicated diacritic for compression in the IPA. However, the compression of the lips can be shown with the letter ⟨β̞⟩ as ⟨ɤ͡β̞⟩ (simultaneous [ɤ] and labial compression) or ⟨ɤᵝ⟩ ([ɤ] modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic ⟨  ͍ ⟩ may also be used with a rounded vowel letter ⟨o͍⟩ as an ad hoc symbol, but 'spread' technically means unrounded.

    Only the Shanghainese dialect is known to contrast this with the more typical protruded (endolabial) close-mid back vowel, but the height of both vowels varies from close to close-mid.

    Features

  • Its vowel height is close-mid, also known as high-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel (a high vowel) and a mid vowel.
  • Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
  • Its roundedness is compressed, which means that the margins of the lips are tense and drawn together in such a way that the inner surfaces are not exposed.

    • References

    Close-mid back rounded vowel Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA