Near-open vowel

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Template:CSS IPA vowel chart
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right
represents a rounded vowel.

A near-open vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but slightly more constricted. Near-open vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-open vowelsTemplate:Fact. The near-open vowels for which separate symbols exist in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: