Close back unrounded vowel
Vowel sound represented by ⟨ɯ⟩ in IPA
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Legend: unrounded • rounded
The close back unrounded vowel, or high back 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 ⟨⟩. Typographically, it is a turned letter ⟨m⟩.
The close back unrounded vowel can in many cases be considered the vocalic equivalent of the voiced velar approximant .
Features
- Its vowel height is close, also known as high, which means the tongue is positioned close to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
- Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
- It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.
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Occurrence
Near-close near-back unrounded vowel
Some languages have a near-close near-back unrounded vowel, or near-high near-back unrounded vowel, which is more centralized than a typical .
The International Phonetic Alphabet has no dedicated symbol for this sound, but it may be represented as (mid-centralized ⟨⟩) or (lowered and centralized ⟨⟩). It may also be transcribed as (less rounded ⟨⟩), but because ⟨⟩ is defined by the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association as rounded (whereas ⟨⟩ and ⟨⟩ do not specify rounding), the symbol can also signify a weakly rounded , rather than the fully unrounded vowel that is described in this article. John C. Wells transcribes this vowel with the para-IPA symbol ⟨⟩ in his Accents of English, though Sinological phonetic notation uses this symbol instead for a near-open back rounded vowel . John Esling uses ⟨⟩ to represent this sound in his iPA Phonetics mobile application, though this is more typically used to represent a near-close central unrounded vowel .
For precision, a near-close back unrounded vowel, or near-high back unrounded vowel, may also be described, and is attested in a few spoken languages. This sound can be represented in the IPA as (lowered ⟨⟩) or (raised ⟨⟩). However, some phoneticians argue that all lip position inverses of the primary cardinal vowels are centralized (with the exception of ⟨⟩) based on formant acoustics, so that there may be no substantial difference between a near-close near-back unrounded vowel and its fully back counterpart .
Features
- Its vowel height is near-close, also known as near-high, which means the tongue is not quite so constricted as a close vowel (high vowel).
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
- Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
- It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.