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Open vowel

Type of vowel sound

Summary

Type of vowel sound

An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned approximately as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology){{cite web|title=VOWEL QUALITY

In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a low vowel can be any vowel that is more open than a mid vowel. That is, open-mid vowels, near-open vowels, and open vowels can all be considered low vowels.

Partial list

The open vowels with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

open front unrounded vowel
open front rounded vowel
open back unrounded vowel
open back rounded vowel

There also are central vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA:

open central unrounded vowel or (commonly written as if it were front)
open central rounded vowel

There is no unambiguous way of transcribing the open central vowels (but see obsolete/nonstandard IPA ᴀ). The diaeresis indicates centralization, so could mean near-front and could mean near-back. However, in practice the diaeresis is assumed to mean central, while and are used for the front and back articulations, respectively.

The extremely rare contrast between open front, central and back unrounded vowels has been reported to occur in the Hamont-Achel dialect of Limburgish, which features long versions of these sounds, as well as short versions of the open front and back vowels. The short versions do not contrast directly with the open central vowel, which can only be long.

References

Bibliography

{{citation |doi-access=free

References

This vowel is not known to occur as a phoneme distinct from {{IPA. /œ/ in any language.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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