Close mid front unrounded vowel

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

The close-mid near-front unrounded vowel, which differs from its front counterpart in that it is somewhat centralized (but still more front than central [ɘ]), is in practice sometimes transcribed with the symbol ⟨ɪ⟩. In narrow transcription, it is equally correctly transcribed with ⟨ɪ̞⟩, ⟨e̠⟩, ⟨ë⟩ or ⟨ɘ̟⟩ (this article uses ⟨e̠⟩).

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