Open vowel

IPA:Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
Near-close	ɪ ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
Mid	e̞ ø̞	ə	ɤ̞ o̞
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
Near-open	æ	ɐ
Open	a ɶ	ä	ɑ ɒ

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Anopen vowelis avowelsound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also calledlow vowels(in U.S. terminology) in reference to the low position of the tongue.

In the context of thephonologyof any particular language, alow vowelcan be any vowel that is more open than amid vowel.That is,open-mid vowels,near-open vowels,and open vowels can all be considered low vowels.

Partial list

The open vowels with dedicated symbols in theInternational Phonetic Alphabetare:

• open front unrounded vowel[a]
• open front rounded vowel[ɶ]
• open back unrounded vowel[ɑ]
• open back rounded vowel[ɒ]

There also are central vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA:

• open central unrounded vowel[ä]or[ɐ̞](commonly written[a]as if it werefront)
• open central rounded vowel[ɒ̈]

There is no unambiguous way of transcribing the open central vowels (but see obsolete/nonstandard IPAᴀ). The diaeresis indicatescentralization,so ⟨ä⟩ could mean near-front and ⟨ɒ̈⟩ could mean near-back. However, in practice the diaeresis is assumed to mean central, while ⟨a̠⟩ and ⟨ɒ̟⟩ are used for the front and back articulations, respectively.

The extremely rare contrast between open front, central and back unrounded vowels has been reported to occur in theHamont-Achel dialectofLimburgish,which features long versions of these sounds, as well as short versions of the open front and back vowels. The short versions do not contrast directly with the open central vowel, which can only be long.

See also

• Close vowel

Bibliography

• Verhoeven, Jo (2007), "The Belgian Limburg dialect of Hamont",Journal of the International Phonetic Association,37(2): 219–225,doi:10.1017/S0025100307002940