Open Back Unrounded Vowel

The open back unrounded vowel, or low back 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A. The letter is called ''script a'' because it lacks the extra hook on top of a printed letter ''a'', which corresponds to a different vowel, the open front unrounded vowel. ''Script a'', which has its linear stroke on the bottom right, should not be confused with ''turned script a'', , which has its linear stroke on the top left and corresponds to a rounded version of this vowel, the open back rounded vowel.

The open back unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the pharyngeal approximant . with the non-syllabic diacritic and are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound.

In some languages (such as Azerbaijani, Estonian, Luxembourgish and Toda) there is the near-open back unrounded vowel (a sound between cardinal and ), which can be transcribed in IPA with or .

The Hamont-Achel dialect of Limburgish has been reported to contrast long open front, central and back unrounded vowels. This is extremely unusual.

Features

Occurrence

See also

* Index of phonetics articles
* Latin alpha

Notes

References

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Open Back Unrounded Vowel
Open vowels
Back vowels
Unrounded vowels