Near-open front unrounded vowel

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The near-open 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 æ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is {. The IPA symbol is the lowercase ae ligature, and both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash".

Features

• Its vowel height is near-open, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but slightly more constricted.
• 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
Ahtna		kuggaedi		'mosquito'
Arabic		كتاب	[‎kɪˈt̪æːb]	'book'	See Arabic phonology
Azeri		səs		'sound'
English		cat	[kʰæt]	'cat'	In New Zealand English, this is closer to [ɛ]. See English phonology
Finnish		mäki		'hill'	See Finnish phonology
German	Bernese	standard German drehen		'turn'	See Bernese German phonology
Norwegian		lær		'leather'	See Norwegian phonology
Persian		در		'door'	See Persian phonology
Polish		jajko		'egg'	See Polish phonology
Russian		пять		'five'	Allophone of /a/ between palatalized consonants. See Russian phonology
Sinhala		කැමති		'to will, to like'
Slovak		deväť		'nine'
Swedish		päron		'pear'	Allophone of /ɛ/ before /r/. See Swedish phonology
Vietnamese		pha		'phase, stage'	Variety: [fa]. See Vietnamese phonology
Yaghan		''mæpi		'reed'

References

Bibliography

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Last updated on Thursday February 21, 2008 at 22:22:04 PST (GMT -0800)
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