Close-mid front unrounded vowel: Encyclopedia II - Close-mid front unrounded vowel - Close-mid front unrounded vowel

Close-mid front unrounded vowel - 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 e, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is e.

Close-mid front unrounded vowel - 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.

Close-mid front unrounded vowel - Occurs in

• Dutch: één [eɪ̯n], 'one'
• English: (AuE) bed [bed] and bared [beːd]; (NZE) bed [be̝d]
  • In RP, this vowel occurs only as the first part of the diphthong [eɪ], as in late [leɪt], play [pleɪ].
  • In CaE, this vowel may occur alone in words like bait during rapid speech.
• French: beauté [bote], 'beauty'
• German: Seele [ˈzeːlə], 'soul'
• Hungarian: hét [heːt], 'week, seven'
• Vietnamese: tê [tē], 'numb'

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Close-mid front unrounded vowel", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki