Open-mid central rounded vowel

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Legend: unrounded • rounded

The open-mid central rounded vowel, or low-mid central rounded vowel, is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨⟩. The symbol is called closed reversed epsilon. 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 ⟨⟩ is a closed variant of ⟨⟩), and this variant made its way into Unicode as U+029A ʚ LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED OPEN E. The IPA charts were later changed to the current closed reversed epsilon ⟨⟩, and this was adopted into Unicode as U+025E ɞ LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED REVERSED OPEN E.

Features

• Its vowel height is open-mid, also known as low-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel (a low vowel) and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
• It is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded rather than spread or relaxed.