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

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

sound, used in some spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s. The symbol in the

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

that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 3\. The symbol is called ''closed reversed

epsilon Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or ; ) 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 derived from the Phoenic ...

''. 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