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Open front unrounded vowel

Vowel sound represented by ⟨a⟩ in IPA

Summary

Vowel sound represented by ⟨a⟩ in IPA

Field	Value
ipa symbol	a
ipa number	304
decimal1	97
x-sampa	a
braille	a
above	Open front unrounded vowel
sound	Open front unrounded vowel.ogg
imagefile	IPA Unicode 0x0061.svg

|x-sampa=a

The open front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. It is one of the eight primary cardinal vowels, not directly intended to correspond to a vowel sound of a specific language but rather to serve as a fundamental reference point in a phonetic measuring system.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is , a double-story lowercase a. In the IPA vowel chart it is positioned at the lower-left corner. However, the accuracy of the quadrilateral vowel chart is disputed, and the sound has been analyzed acoustically as extra-open at a position where the front/back distinction has lost its significance. There are also differing interpretations of the exact quality of the vowel: the classic sound recording of by Daniel Jones is slightly more front but not quite as open as that by John Wells.

In practice, the symbol is often used to represent an open central unrounded vowel. This is the usual practice, for example, in the historical study of the English language. The loss of separate symbols for open and near-open front vowels is usually considered unproblematic, because the perceptual difference between the two is quite small, and very few languages contrast the two. If there is a need to specify the backness of the vowel as fully front one can use the symbol , which denotes a lowered near-open front unrounded vowel, or with the IPA "advanced" diacritic.

Features

This subsumes central open (central low) vowels because the tongue does not have as much flexibility in positioning as it does in the mid and close (high) vowels; the difference between an open front vowel and an open back vowel is similar to the difference between a close front and a close central vowel, or a close central and a close back vowel.

a}}. A wavy [[glottis]] in this diagram indicates a voiced sound.

Occurrence

Many languages have some form of an unrounded open vowel. For languages that have only a single open vowel, the symbol for this vowel may be used because it is the only open vowel whose symbol is part of the basic Latin alphabet. Whenever marked as such, the vowel is closer to a central than to a front . However, there may not actually be much of a difference. (See Vowel#Acoustics.)

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Afrikaans	Standard	dak		'roof'
Arabic	Standard	أنا (anā)		'I' 1st person singular pronoun
Azerbaijani	Standard	səs		'sound'
Bulgarian		най (nay)		'most'
Catalan	Majorcan	sac		'bag'
Many dialects	raig		'ray'	Allophone of in contact with palatal consonants. It can be higher (). See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	安 (ān)		'safe'
Dutch	Standard	aas		'bait'
Utrecht	bad		'bath'	Corresponds to in Northern Standard Dutch. See Dutch phonology
English	Australian	hat		'hat'
California	Less open in other North American varieties. See English phonology and Canadian Shift
Canadian
Some Central Ohioan speakers
Some Texan speakers
Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg	Closer in General South African English. See South African English phonology
Received Pronunciation	Closer in Conservative Received Pronunciation. See English phonology
Scouse
East Anglian	bra		'bra'	Realized as central by middle-class speakers.
Inland Northern American	Less front [ ~ ] in other American dialects. See Northern Cities Vowel Shift
New Zealand		Varies between open near-front , open central , near-open near-front and near-open central . May be transcribed in IPA with . See New Zealand English phonology
French	Conservative Parisian	patte		'paw'
Quebec	arrêt		'stopping'	Contrasts with . See Quebec French phonology
German	Altbayern accent	Wassermassen		'water masses'
Many Austrian accents	nah		'near'	Less front in other accents. See Standard German phonology
Hindustani	Hindi	बाप(baap)		'father', 'dad'
Urdu	باپ(baap)
Igbo	ákụ		'kernel'
Khmer	បាត់ (km)		'to disappear'	See Khmer phonology
បាត (km)		'bottom'
Kurdish	Palewani (Southern)	گه‌ن (gen)		'bad'
Limburgish	Many dialects	baas		'boss'
Low German	Daag / Dag		'day'	Backness may vary among dialects.
Luxembourgish	Kap		'cap'	Near-front; sometimes fronted and raised to . See Luxembourgish phonology
Malay	Standard	رق (rak)		'shelf'
Norwegian	Stavangersk	hatt		'hat'
Trondheimsk	lær		'leather'
Polish	jajo		'egg'	Allophone of between palatal or palatalized consonants. See Polish phonology
Spanish	Eastern Andalusian	las madres		'the mothers'
Murcian
Swedish	Central Standard	bank		'bank'
Turkish	kâğıt		'paper'	Only occurs with â (a with "circumflex"), which is not originally in the Turkish alphabet. Also described as central .
West Frisian	Aastersk	kaaks		'ship's biscuit'

Notes

References

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{{citation |access-date=2014-06-06 |archive-date=2017-10-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011044945/http://gep.ruhosting.nl/carlos/gussenhoven_aarts.pdf |url-status=dead
{{citation |access-date=2014-06-06 |archive-date=2016-03-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304034049/http://gep.ruhosting.nl/carlos/weert.pdf |url-status=dead
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{{citation |editor-last1=Munske |editor-first1=Horst Haider |editor-last2=Århammar |editor-first2=Hans |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0nx-GUm-0OIC
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References

{{Vowel terminology
John Coleman: [http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/jcoleman/CardinalVowels.htm Cardinal vowels]
[[Geoff Lindsey]] (2013) [http://englishspeechservices.com/blog/the-vowel-space/ The vowel space], Speech Talk
Keith Johnson: [http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/ling110/Lecture_Slides/3_Vowels/Vowels.pdf Vowels in the languages of the world] {{Webarchive. link. (2016-03-04 (PDF), p. 9)
{{Harvcoltxt. Thomas. 2004. LOT/{{sc2. THOUGHT merger have {{sc2. TRAP shifted toward {{IPA. [a], but this retraction is not yet as common as in some non-Southern regions (e.g., California and Canada), though it is increasing in parts of the Midwest on the margins of the South (e.g., central Ohio).
"Case Studies – Received Pronunciation Phonology – RP Vowel Sounds". British Library.
Watson, Kevin. (2007). "Liverpool English". Journal of the International Phonetic Association.
W. Labov, S. Ash and C. Boberg. (1997). "A national map of the regional dialects of American English". Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.

Wikipedia Source

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