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The near-close near-back unrounded vowel or near-high near-back unrounded vowel, is a type of a vowel sound, used in a few spoken languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet can represent this sound in a number of ways (see the box on the right), but arguably the most common symbol is ⟨ɯ̽⟩ (mid-centralized [ɯ]), a symbol equivalent to a more complex ⟨ɯ̞̈⟩ (lowered and centralized [ɯ]), or sometimes with the old convention of ⟨ω⟩. For the fully central equivalent of this vowel, see near-close central unrounded vowel.
Theoretically, it can also be represented in the IPA as ⟨ʊ̜⟩ (less rounded [ʊ]), but because [ʊ] is defined by the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association as rounded (rather than unspecified for rounding as [ə] and [ɐ]), the symbol ⟨ʊ̜⟩ can also signify a weakly rounded [ʊ], rather than a fully unrounded vowel that is described in this article.
The only languages in which it is phonemic are Korean and the European variety of Portuguese, although in the latter it appears only in unstressed syllables.