The open-mid central rounded vowel, or low-mid central rounded vowel, is a

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

sound, used in some spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

s. The symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

that represents this sound is , and the equivalent

X-SAMPA The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at University College London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and ...

symbol is 3\. The symbol is called ''closed reversed

epsilon Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or lunate ; el, έψιλον) is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a mid front unrounded vowel or . In the system of Greek numerals it also has the value five. It was der ...

''. It was added to the IPA in 1993; before that, this vowel was transcribed . IPA charts were first published with this vowel transcribed as a closed epsilon, (that is, a closed variant of , much as the high-mid vowel letter is a closed variant of ), and this variant made its way into Unicode as . The IPA charts were later changed to the current closed reversed epsilon , and this was adopted into Unicode as .

Features

Occurrence

Notes

References

External links