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Vowels

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.

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.

Occurrence

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.

Occurrence

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

References

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