Close-mid front unrounded vowel

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Vowels

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right
represents a rounded vowel.

1 Close-mid front unrounded vowel
- 1.1 Features
- 1.2 Occurs in
2 Mid front unrounded vowel
- 2.1 Occurs in
3 Reference

Close-mid front unrounded vowel

The close-mid front 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 Template:IPA, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is e.

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Features

Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.
Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

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Occurs in

Dutch: één Template:IPA, 'one'
English: (AuE) bed Template:IPA and bared Template:IPA; (NZE) bed Template:IPA
- In RP, this vowel occurs only as the first part of the diphthong Template:IPA, as in late Template:IPA, play Template:IPA.
- In CaE, this vowel may occur alone in words like bait during rapid speech.
French: beauté Template:IPA, 'beauty'
German: Seele Template:IPA, 'soul'
Hungarian: hét Template:IPA, 'week, seven'
Vietnamese: tê Template:IPA, 'numb'

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Mid front unrounded vowel

Many languages, such as Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish, have a mid front unrounded vowel, which to speakers is clearly distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and Template:IPA is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic can be used: Template:IPA.

Note that just because a language has only one non-close, non-open front vowel, that doesn't mean it's a cardinal mid vowel. Igbo, for example, has a close-mid Template:IPA, whereas Bulgarian has an open-mid Template:IPA; in neither language does this contrast with another open/close-mid vowel.

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