Roundedness - Types of rounding

In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, while back vowels tend to be rounded. But some languages, such as French and German, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height, while Vietnamese distinguishes rou ...

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There are two types of vowel rounding: endolabial, or compressed, and exolabial, or protruded. The northern Iroquoian languages have no labial consonants. They do have /w/, /gʷ/, and /kʷ/, but these do not involve noticeable rounding (protrusion) of the lips. It may be that they are purely velar [ɰ, gᶭ, kᶭ], but it is also possible that they are compressed. It is not known how this might ...

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Roundedness, Roundedness - Types of rounding

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