Close-mid front unrounded vowel

Close-mid front unrounded vowel

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.

Features

• Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between 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.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Catalan		cec	[sek]	'blind'	See Catalan phonology
Dutch		''vreemd		'strange'	See Dutch phonology
English	Australian	bed	[bed]	'bed'	See Australian English phonology
	Canadian	play		'play'	In more careful speech, may be diphthongized as in RP: [eɪ]
Faroese		eg		'I'
French		beauté		'beauty'	See French phonology
Georgian		მეფჱ		'king'
German		Seele		'soul'	See German phonology
Hungarian		hét		'week, seven'	See Hungarian phonology
Italian		stelle		'stars'	See Italian phonology
Korean		베다/peda		'to cut'	See Korean phonology
Norwegian		le		'laugh'	See Norwegian phonology
Polish		dzień		'day'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese		mesa		'table'	See Portuguese phonology
Russian		шея		'neck'	Occurs only before soft consonants. See Russian phonology
Swedish		se		'see'	See Swedish phonology
Vietnamese		tê		'numb'	See Vietnamese phonology

Mid front unrounded vowel

Many languages, 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 such as 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 don't contrast said vowels with another front mid vowel.

Occurrence

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

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Albanian		keq		'bad'
Croatian		deset		'ten'
English	Yorkshire	play		'play'	See English phonology
Hebrew		חלק	[χelek]	'part'	Hebrew vowels are not shown in the script, see Niqqud and Hebrew phonology
Finnish		menen		'I (will) go'
Greek		φαινόμενο		'phenomenon'	See Modern Greek phonology
Japanese		笑み		'smile'	See Japanese phonology
Korean		베개		'pillow'	See Korean phonology
Romanian		fete		'girls'	See Romanian phonology
Russian		человек		'person'	Occurs only after soft consonants. See Russian phonology
Serbian		жена/žena		'woman'
Spanish		bebé	[beˈβ̞e]	'baby'	See Spanish phonology
Turkish		kel	[kel]	'bald'	See Turkish phonology

References

Bibliography