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Close mid front rounded vowel

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IPA number
  
310

Unicode (hex)
  
U+00F8

Kirshenbaum
  
Y

Entity (decimal)
  
ø

X-SAMPA
  
2

Close-mid front rounded vowel

The close-mid front rounded vowel, or high-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Acoustically it is a close-mid front-central rounded vowel. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ø⟩, a lowercase letter o with a diagonal stroke through it, borrowed from the Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese languages, where the letter sometimes represents this sound. The symbol is commonly referred to as "o, slash" in English.

Contents

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

Close-mid front compressed vowel

The close-mid front compressed vowel is typically transcribed in IPA simply as ⟨ø⟩, which is the convention used in this article. There is no dedicated diacritic for compression in the IPA. However, the compression of the lips can be shown with the letter ⟨β̞⟩ as ⟨e͡β̞⟩ (simultaneous [e] and labial compression) or ⟨eᵝ⟩ ([e] modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic ⟨  ͍ ⟩ may also be used with a rounded vowel letter ⟨ø͍⟩ as an ad hoc symbol, but 'spread' technically means unrounded.

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 front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that rounded front vowels are often centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-front.
  • 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.

    • Close-mid front protruded vowel

    Catford 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 languages, such as Scandinavian ones, have protruded front vowels. One of these, Swedish, even contrasts the two types of rounding in front vowels (see near-close near-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 ⟨øʷ⟩ or ⟨eʷ⟩ (a close-mid front vowel modified by endolabialization), but this could be misread as a diphthong.

    Acoustically, this sound is "between" the more typical compressed close-mid front vowel [ø] and the unrounded close-mid front vowel [e].

    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 front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that rounded front vowels are often centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-front.
  • Its roundedness is protruded, which means that the corners of the lips are drawn together, and the inner surfaces exposed.

    • References

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


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