Close-mid front unrounded vowel

Encyclopedia : C : CL : CLO : Close-mid front unrounded vowel

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IPA – number	302
IPA – text
IPA – image
Entity	e
X-SAMPA	e
Kirshenbaum	e

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.

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.

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'

Mid front unrounded vowel

Many languages, such as Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish, have a mid front unrounded vowel, which to speakers is clearly distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and [e] is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic can be used: [e̞].

Note that just because a language has only one non-close, non-open front vowel, that doesn't mean it's a cardinal mid vowel. Igbo, for example, has a close-mid [e], whereas Bulgarian has an open-mid [ɛ]; in neither language does this contrast with another open/close-mid vowel.

Occurs in

• Albanian: keq [ke̞c], 'bad'
• English: in GA, the first part of the diphthong [e̞ɪ], as in late [le̞ɪt], play [ple̞ɪ].
• Greek: επέτρεψε [e̞ˈpe̞tre̞pse̞], 's/he allowed'
• Italian: benché [be̞n'ke*], 'though'
• Japanese: 笑み [e̞mi], 'smile'
• Romanian: fete ['fe̞.te̞], 'girls'
• Spanish: bebé [be̞ˈβ̞e̞], 'baby'
• Turkish: kel [ke̞l], 'bald'

Reference

 

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