Open front rounded vowel

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The open front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɶ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is &. The symbol ɶ is a small capital Œ. Note that œ, the lowercase version of the ligature, is used for the open-mid front rounded vowel.

Features

• Its vowel height is open, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth.
• 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 rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurrence

[ɶ] is not confirmed to exist as a phoneme in any language. A phoneme generally transcribed by this symbol is reported from the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian German. It is the rounded equivalent of /æ/, not of open /a/, and so would be more narrowly transcribed as [œ̞] or [ɶ̝]. However, the vowel formants place Amstetten /æ/ and /œ/ one third of the way between /a/ and /i/, matching the IPA definition for open-mid vowels.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Danish		''bønne	[bɶnɶ]	'bean'	See Danish phonology
French	Acadian	honneur	[ɔnɶʁ]	--	Allophone of /œ/ before /ʁ/. See French phonology
German	Amstetten dialect	Seil		'rope'	See German phonology
Swedish		hört		'heard' (supine)	See Swedish phonology

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Last updated on Saturday January 12, 2008 at 02:36:09 PST (GMT -0800)
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