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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	321
IPA – text	ʊ
IPA – image
Entity	ʊ
X-SAMPA	U
Kirshenbaum	U
Sound sample (help·info)

The near-close near-back vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the near-close near-back rounded vowel is ‹ʊ›. This derives from a small turned capital Ω; although officially called a small Latin letter upsilon, it bears little resemblance to the Greek upsilon and is informally called "horseshoe u" instead. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is U. Prior to 1989, there was an alternate IPA symbol for this sound, ‹ɷ›, called "closed omega". Use of this symbol is no longer sanctioned by the IPA. In Americanist phonetic notation, the symbol [ᴜ] (a small capital U) is used.

Some languages may have a near-close near-back unrounded vowel; since no language is known to contrast rounding of this vowel, the IPA has not devised a standard way to represent this and thus can be represented in a number of ways, including ‹ɯ̽› and ‹ʊ̜›.

There is also a near-close central rounded vowel in some languages.

Features

• Its vowel height is near-close, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted.
• Its vowel backness is near-back, which means the tongue is positioned as in a back vowel, but slightly further forward in the mouth.
• Its vowel roundedness is generally rounded, which means that the lips are rounded to a greater or lesser degree, but is sometimes rather ambiguous. Because no language is known to contrast rounding this place of articulation, the IPA has not created separate symbols to show this.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, an unrounded vowel is represented by the "less-rounded" diacritic [ʊ̜]:

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Arabic		كتب	[ˈkʊtʊb]	'books'	See Arabic phonology
Chinese	Cantonese	紅	[hʊ̜ŋ]	'red'	See Cantonese phonology
	Mandarin	紅	[xʊ̜ŋ˧˥]	'red'	May be only slightly rounded. See Mandarin phonology
English		hook	[hʊk]	'hook'	May be only slightly rounded. See English phonology
Faroese		hvalur	[kvɛalʊɹ]	'whale'
French	Quebec	foule	[fʊl]	'crowd'	See French phonology
German		Schutz	[ʃʊts]	'protection'	See German phonology
Mongolian[1]		өлгий	[ʊɮɣiː]	'cradle'
Portuguese	European[2]	pegar	[pʊ̜ˈɡaɾ]	'to hold'	Unstressed vowel. See Portuguese phonology
	Brazilian[3]	saco	[ˈsakʊ]	'bag'
Russian[4]		сухой	[sʊˈxo̞j]	'dry'	Unstressed allophone of /u/. See Russian phonology
Swedish		ort	[ʊʈ] (help·info)	'(geographic) place'	Exolabial (compressed). See Swedish phonology
Vietnamese		thu	[tʰʊw]	'autumn'	See Vietnamese phonology

References

Bibliography

• Barbosa, Plínio A.; Albano, Eleonora C. (2004), "Brazilian Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 227–232 
• 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 
• 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.