The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of

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 that occurs in most 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, represented 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 ...

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 lang ...

. 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 (physical quantity), dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a Base unit (measurement), base unit for length is chosen, ...

(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 or a vowel glide, 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 ...

), 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, in words like ''chic''. The close front unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant 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 notation i ...

. They

alternate Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * Alternative comics, or independent comics are an alternative to mainstream superh ...

with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the

s of some languages, with the non-syllabic diacritic and are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound. Languages that use the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

commonly use the letter to represent this sound, though there are some exceptions: in

English orthography English orthography comprises the set of rules used when writing the English language, allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. English's orthograp ...

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

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Close Front Unrounded Vowel Close vowels Front vowels Unrounded vowels