Open-mid back unrounded vowel

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The open-mid back 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 ʌ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is V. The IPA symbol is an inverted letter v and both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as either a wedge, a caret, or a hat. In transcriptions for some languages (including several dialects of English), this symbol is also used for the Near-open central vowel

Features

Its vowel height is open-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel and a mid vowel.
Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back 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	Meaning	Notes
English	eastern American	plus	'plus'	Less fronted than other dialects. See English phonology
	GA
	Scottish
Irish		ola	'oil'	See Irish phonology
Korean		벌	'punishment'	See Korean phonology
Vietnamese		ân	'favour; grace'	Also analyzed as central [ɜ]. See Vietnamese phonology

Before World War II, Received Pronunciation had /ʌ/ as a phoneme; this sound has since shifted forward to [ɐ]. Despite this change, the symbol <ʌ> is still used. This may be due to both tradition as well as the fact that some other dialects retain the older pronunciation.

References

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Last updated on Saturday March 08, 2008 at 16:39:03 PST (GMT -0800)
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