Close-mid front unrounded vowel
| Edit - 2× | Front | N.-front | Central | N.-back | Back |
| Close | |||||
| Near-close | |||||
| Close-mid | |||||
| Mid | |||||
| Open-mid | |||||
| Near-open | |||||
| Open | |||||
represents a rounded vowel.
| IPA – number | 302 |
| IPA – text | e |
| IPA – image | Image:Xsampa-e.png |
| entity | e |
| X-SAMPA | e |
| Kirshenbaum | e |
| Sound sample ▶(?) | |
|---|---|
Contents |
Close-mid front unrounded vowel
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 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.
Occurs in
- Dutch: één [ejn], 'one'
- English: (AuE) bed [bed] and bared [beːd]; (NZE) bed [be̝d]
- French: beauté [bote], 'beauty'
- German: Seele [ˈzeːlə], 'soul'
- Hungarian: hét [heːt], 'week, seven'
- Vietnamese: tê [tē], 'numb'
Mid front unrounded vowel
Many languages, such as Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish, have a mid front unrounded vowel, which to speakers is clearly distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. 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].
Note that just because a language has only one non-close, non-open front vowel, that doesn't mean it's a cardinal mid vowel. Igbo, for example, has a close-mid [e], whereas Bulgarian has a open-mid [ɛ]; in neither language does this contrast with another open/close-mid vowel.