Mid back unrounded vowel

Mid back unrounded vowel
ɤ̞
ʌ̝
IPA number	315 430
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɤ​̞
Unicode (hex)	U+0264 U+031E

The mid back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Acoustically it is a mid back-central unrounded vowel. Although there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the "exact" mid back unrounded vowel between close-mid [ɤ] and open-mid [ʌ] (because no language is known to distinguish all three), ⟨ɤ⟩ is normally used. If precision is desired, diacritics can be used, such as ⟨ɤ̞⟩ or ⟨ʌ̝⟩.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ɯ̽ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ •əɵ̞ •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ •ɐɞ̞ •aɶ •äɒ̈ •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
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• Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel and an open vowel.
• Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Bulgarian		път	[pɤ̞̈t̪]	'path'	Near-back. See Bulgarian phonology
Chinese	Shanghainese	[kɤ̞̈¹]		'ditch'	Near-back; tends to be diphthongized to [ɤ̞̈ɯ̞̈] by younger speakers.
Danish	Standard	læger	[ˈleːɤ̞̈]	'doctors'	Near-back; one of possible realizations of the sequences /ər, rə, rər/. See Danish phonology
English	Cardiff	plus	[pl̥ɤ̞̈s]	'plus'	Near-back. In Cardiff, it may be [ə], [ɜ], [ɜ̟] or [ë̞] instead. It corresponds to [ʌ] in other dialects. See English phonology
	Norfolk
Estonian		kõrv	[kɤ̞rv]	'ear'	Can be mid central [ə] or close back [ɯ] instead, depending on the speaker. See Estonian phonology
German	Chemnitz dialect	Schirm	[ʃɤ̞̈ˤːm]	'umbrella'	Pharyngealized near-back; may be transcribed in IPA with ⟨ʌˤː⟩. It may be realized as [ɪːɒ̯] instead. See Chemnitz dialect phonology
Ibibio		[dɤ̞̈k˦]		'enter'	Near-back; typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨ʌ⟩.
Vietnamese	Hanoi	tờ	[t̻ɤ̞̈˧˨]	'sheet'	Near-back. Realization of /ɤ/ (also transcribed in IPA with ⟨ə⟩) according to Kirby (2011). See Vietnamese phonology
Võro		Võro	[ˈvɤ̞ro̞]	'Võro'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

Bibliography

• Asu, Eva Liina; Teras, Pire (2009), "Estonian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 39 (3): 367–372, doi:10.1017/s002510030999017x
• Basbøll, Hans (2005), The Phonology of Danish, ISBN 0-203-97876-5
• Chen, Yiya; Gussenhoven, Carlos (2015), "Shanghai Chinese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 45 (3): 321–327, doi:10.1017/S0025100315000043
• Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (1990), "The Phonetics of Cardiff English", in Coupland, Nikolas; Thomas, Alan Richard (eds.), English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict, and Change, Multilingual Matters Ltd., pp. 87–103, ISBN 1-85359-032-0
• Khan, Sameer ud Dowla; Weise, Constanze (2013), "Upper Saxon (Chemnitz dialect)" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (2): 231–241, doi:10.1017/S0025100313000145
• Kirby, James P. (2011), "Vietnamese (Hanoi Vietnamese)" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 41 (3): 381–392, doi:10.1017/S0025100311000181
• Lodge, Ken (2009), A Critical Introduction to Phonetics, Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-8264-8873-2
• Ternes, Elmer; Vladimirova-Buhtz, Tatjana (1999), "Bulgarian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 55–57, ISBN 0-521-63751-1
• Urua, Eno-Abasi E. (2004), "Ibibio", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 105–109, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001550