The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of
vowel sound that occurs in most spoken
languages, represented 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 ...
by the symbol i. It is similar to the vowel sound in the
English word ''meet''—and often called long-e in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
. Although in English this sound has additional
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
(usually being represented as ) and is not normally pronounced as a pure vowel (it is a slight
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
), some dialects have been reported to pronounce the phoneme as a pure sound.
A pure sound is also heard in many other languages, such as
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, in words like ''chic''.
The close front unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the
palatal approximant
The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic no ...
. They
alternate with each other in certain languages, such as
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, and in the
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s of some languages, with the non-syllabic diacritic and are used in different
transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
systems to represent the same sound.
Languages that use the
Latin script commonly use the letter to represent this sound, though there are some exceptions: in
English orthography that letter is usually associated with (as in ''bite'') or (as in ''bit''), and is more commonly represented by , , , or , as in the words ''scene'', ''bean'', ''meet'', ''niece'', ''conceive''; (see
Great Vowel Shift).
Irish orthography reflects both etymology and whether preceding consonants are broad or slender, so such combinations as , , and all represent .
Features
Occurrence
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Close Front Unrounded Vowel
Close vowels
Front vowels
Unrounded vowels