Vowels

v • d • e

See also: IPA, Consonants

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ · ʏ ɪ̈ · ʊ̈ ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents
a rounded vowel. Vowel length is indicated by appending  ː

IPA – number	302
IPA – text	e
IPA – image
Entity	e
X-SAMPA	e
Kirshenbaum	e
Sound sample (help·info)

The close-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, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is e.

[edit] Features

• Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close 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.
• Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

[edit] Occurrence

[edit] Mid front unrounded vowel

Many languages, such as Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Greek and Turkish, have a mid front unrounded vowel that is clearly distinct to speakers from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. A number of dialects of English also have such a mid front vowel. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and [e] is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic can be used: [e̞].

Although many languages have only one non-close, non-open front vowel, there is no predisposition for it being mid. Igbo, for example, has a close-mid [e], whereas Bulgarian has an open-mid [ɛ], even though these languages do not contrast said vowels with another mid front vowel.

[edit] Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, the lowering diacritic has been omitted for the sake of simplicity.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Carbonell, Joan F.; Llisterri, Joaquim (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53-56 
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90-94 
• Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline L (1993), "Illustrations of the IPA:French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73-76 
• Iivonen, Antti; Harnud, Huhe (2005), "Acoustical comparison of the monophthong systems in Finnish, Mongolian and Udmurt", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 59-71 
• Jones, Daniel; Dennis, Ward (1969). The Phonetics of Russian. Cambridge University Press. 
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255-259 
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquipan Zapotec", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38 (1): 107-114 
• Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999). A Course in Phonology. Blackwell Publishing. 
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117-121 
• Shosted, Ryan K.; Vakhtang, Chikovani (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255-264 
• Szende, Tamás (1994), "Illustrations of the IPA:Hungarian", Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 24 (2): 91-94