Mid front rounded vowel

Mid front protruded vowel
Mid front protruded vowel
ø̫˕
œ̫˔

Mid front rounded vowel
Mid front rounded vowel
ø̞
œ̝
IPA number	310 430
Audio sample
	source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ø̞
Unicode (hex)	U+00F8 U+031E
X-SAMPA	2_o or 9_r
Braille

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

Legend: unrounded • rounded

The mid front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages.

Although there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the "exact" mid front rounded vowel between close-mid [ø] and open-mid [œ], ⟨ø⟩ is generally used. If precision is desired, diacritics can be used, such as ⟨ø̞⟩ or ⟨œ̝⟩.

Some of the vowels listed in the table below may phonetically be more back than typical front vowels, as near-front vowels. See mid near-front rounded vowel for other examples.

Mid front compressed vowel

The mid front compressed vowel is typically transcribed in IPA simply as ⟨ø̞⟩ or ⟨œ̝⟩. This article uses the first symbol for simplicity. There is no dedicated diacritic for compression in the IPA. However, the compression of the lips can be shown with the letter ⟨β̞⟩ as ⟨e̞͡β̞⟩ / ⟨ɛ̝͡β̞⟩ (simultaneous [e̞] / [ɛ̝] and labial compression) or ⟨e̞ᵝ⟩ / ⟨ɛ̝ᵝ⟩ ([e̞] / [ɛ̝] modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic ⟨ ͍⟩ may also be used with a rounded vowel letters ⟨ø͍˕⟩ / ⟨œ͍˔⟩ as an ad hoc symbol, though technically 'spread' means unrounded.

Features

Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel and an open vowel.
Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Rounded front vowels are often centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-front.
Its roundedness is compressed, which means that the margins of the lips are tense and drawn together in such a way that the inner surfaces are not exposed.

Occurrence

Because front rounded vowels are assumed to have compression, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some of the following may actually have protrusion.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Breton		^{[example needed]}			Possible realization of unstressed /œ/; can be open-mid [œ] or close-mid [ø] instead.
Catalan	Northern	fulles	[ˈfœ̝jəs]	'leaves'	Realization of /u/ in Capcir. Also found in Occitan and French loanwords and interferences. See Catalan phonology
Danish	Standard	høne	[ˈhœ̝ːnə]	'hen'	Also described as close-mid [øː]; typically transcribed with ⟨œ⟩. See Danish phonology
Dutch	Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect	mùl	[mœ̝ɫ]	'well'	Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨œ⟩.
English	Cockney	bird	[bœ̝ːd]	'bird'	Occasional realization of /ɜː/; can be unrounded [ɛ̝̈ː] or, more often, unrounded central [ɜ̝ː] instead. May be transcribed in IPA with ⟨ɜː⟩ or ⟨œː⟩.
	General New Zealand				May be open-mid [œː] instead, or close-mid [øː] in broader varieties. Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨ɵː⟩. See New Zealand English phonology
	South African				Used in General and Broad accents; may be close-mid [øː] instead. In the Cultivated variety, it is realized as mid central unrounded [ɜ̝ː]. See South African English phonology
	Southern Welsh				Also described as open-mid [œː] and close-mid [øː].
	West Midlands
Faroese		høgt	[hœ̝kt]	'high'	Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨œ⟩. See Faroese phonology
Finnish		rölli	[ˈrø̞lːi]	'Common bent'	See Finnish phonology
Greek	Tyrnavos	κοριός / koreos	[ko̞ˈɾø̞s]	'bedbug'	Corresponds to /jo/ and /eo/ in Standard Modern Greek.
Greek	Velvendos	κοριός / koreos	[ko̞ˈɾø̞s]	'bedbug'	Corresponds to /jo/ and /eo/ in Standard Modern Greek.
Hungarian		öl	[ø̞l]	'kill'	See Hungarian phonology
Icelandic		öld	[œ̝l̪t̪]	'age'	Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨œ⟩. The long allophone is often diphthongized to [øœ]. See Icelandic phonology
Korean		왼손 (oenson)	[ø̞ːnson]	'left hand'	Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨ø⟩. Diphthongized to [we] in Modern Standard Korean. See Korean phonology
Romanian		bleu	[bl̪ø̞]	'light blue'	Found only in loanwords. See Romanian phonology
Turkish	Standard	göz	[ˈɟœ̝z̟]	'eye'	Typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨œ⟩. May be more centralized as [œ̝̈]. See Turkish phonology

Mid front protruded vowel

Catford notes^{[full citation needed]} that most languages with rounded front and back vowels use distinct types of labialization, protruded back vowels and compressed front vowels. However, a few languages, such as Scandinavian ones, have protruded front vowels. One of these, Swedish, even contrasts the two types of rounding in front vowels (see near-close near-front rounded vowel, with Swedish examples of both types of rounding).

As there are no diacritics in the IPA to distinguish protruded and compressed rounding, ⟨ø̞ʷ⟩ (a mid front rounded vowel modified by endolabialization) will be used here as an ad hoc symbol for protruded mid front vowels.

Acoustically, this sound is "between" the more typical compressed mid front vowel [ø̞] and the unrounded mid front vowel [e̞].

Features

Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel and an open vowel.
Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Rounded front vowels are often centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-front.
Its roundedness is protruded, which means that the corners of the lips are drawn together, and the inner surfaces exposed.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Swedish	Central Standard	rösta	[ˈʐœ̝᫇s˦˥˩tä˦˥˩]^ⓘ	'to vote'	Engstrand (1990) reported the phonemes /œ øː/ and placed the short variant at mid height, as in [œ̝᫇]. According to Pelzer & Boersma (2019), the long vowel has been lowered to open-mid [œ̫ː] in Linköping and Lund, and near-open [œ̞᫇ː] in Stockholm, with the recommendation of transcribing the phoneme as /œː/ instead of /øː/. Persson (2024) reported both short and long variants as allophones of the phonemes /ø øː/, lowered before /r/ and any retroflex segment; long [øː œː] are marked as 'lower-mid' and short [ø œ] are marked as 'mid-high', each pairing being differentiated primarily by formant acoustics other than height, and all as central rather than front. See Swedish phonology

Notes

1 2 Ternes (1992), p. 433.
↑ Recasens (1996), pp. 80–81.
↑ "Aplicació al català dels principis de transcripció de l'associació fonètica internacional" [Application to Catalan of the transcription principles of the International Phonetic Association] (PDF) (in Catalan). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-01-26.
↑ Basbøll (2005), p. 46.
↑ Basbøll & Wagner (1985), p. 40, cited in Basbøll (2005), p. 48.
↑ Peters (2010), p. 241.
1 2 Wells (1982), p. 305.
1 2 Wells (1982), p. 607.
1 2 Roca & Johnson (1999), p. 188.
↑ Bauer & Warren (2004), pp. 582, 591.
1 2 Lass (2002), p. 116.
↑ Wells (1982), p. 381.
↑ Penhallurick (2004), p. 104.
↑ Collins & Mees (1990), p. 95.
↑ Connolly (1990), p. 125.
↑ Collins & Mees (2003), p. 299.
↑ Peterson (2000), cited in Árnason (2011), p. 76.
↑ Iivonen & Harnud (2005), pp. 60, 66.
↑ Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo (2008), p. 21.
1 2 3 Trudgill (2009), pp. 86–87.
↑ Szende (1994), p. 92.
↑ Brodersen (2011).
↑ Árnason (2011), pp. 57–60.
↑ Lee (1999), p. 121.
1 2 Romanian Academy (2005), p. ?.
↑ Zimmer & Orgun (1992), p. 44.
↑ Göksel & Kerslake (2005), p. 11.
↑ Engstrand (1990), p. 43.
↑ Elmquist (1915), p. 33.
↑ Pelzer & Boersma (2019), pp. 1146–1147.
↑ Persson (2024), p. 604.
↑ Persson (2024), §3.2.1, §4.

References

Árnason, Kristján (2011), The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-922931-4
Basbøll, Hans (2005), The Phonology of Danish, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0-203-97876-5
Basbøll, Hans; Wagner, Johannes (1985), Kontrastive Phonologie des Deutschen und Dänischen, Max Niemeyer Verlag, ISBN 978-3-484-30160-3
Bauer, Laurie; Warren, Paul (2004), "New Zealand English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 580–602, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
Brodersen, Randi Benedikte (2011), "Islændinges udtale af dansk", Sprogmuseet (in Danish), archived from the original on 2019-02-15, retrieved 2018-03-15
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
Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003) [First published 1981], The Phonetics of English and Dutch (5th ed.), Leiden: Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004103406
Connolly, John H. (1990), "Port Talbot English", in Coupland, Nikolas; Thomas, Alan Richard (eds.), English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict, and Change, Multilingual Matters Ltd., pp. 121–129, ISBN 1-85359-032-0
Elmquist, A. Louis (1915), Swedish phonology, Chicago: The Engberg-Holmberg Publishing Company
Engstrand, Olle (1990), "Swedish (Illustrations of the IPA)", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 20 (1), Cambridge University Press: 42–44, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004060
Göksel, Asli; Kerslake, Celia (2005), Turkish: a comprehensive grammar, Routledge, ISBN 978-0415114943
Iivonen, Antti; Harnud, Huhe (2005), "Acoustical comparison of the monophthong systems in Finnish, Mongolian and Udmurt", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35 (1): 59–71, doi:10.1017/S002510030500191X, S2CID 145733117
Lass, Roger (2002), "South African English", in Mesthrie, Rajend (ed.), Language in South Africa, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521791052
Lee, Hyun Bok (1999), "Korean", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 120–122, ISBN 978-0-521-63751-0
Pelzer, Joppe A.; Boersma, Paul (2019), Diphthongization in three regional varieties of Swedish (PDF), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association, pp. 1144–1148
Penhallurick, Robert (2004), "Welsh English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 98–112, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
Persson, Anna (2024), "The acoustic characteristics of Swedish vowels", Phonetica, 81 (6): 599–643, doi:10.1515/phon-2024-0011, PMID 39443329
Peters, Jörg (2010), "The Flemish–Brabant dialect of Orsmaal–Gussenhoven", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 40 (2): 239–246, doi:10.1017/S0025100310000083
Peterson, Hjalmar P. (2000), "Mátingar af sjálvljóðum í føruyskum", Málting, 28: 37–43
Recasens, Daniel (1996), Fonètica descriptiva del català: assaig de caracterització de la pronúncia del vocalisme i el consonantisme català al segle XX (2nd ed.), Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, ISBN 978-84-7283-312-8
Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999), A Course in Phonology, Blackwell Publishing
Romanian Academy (2005), Dicționarul ortografic, ortoepic și morfologic al limbii române (2nd ed.), Bucarest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic
Suomi, Kari; Toivanen, Juhani; Ylitalo, Riikka (2008), Finnish sound structure – Phonetics, phonology, phonotactics and prosody (PDF), Studia Humaniora Ouluensia 9, Oulu University Press, ISBN 978-951-42-8984-2
Szende, Tamás (1994), "Hungarian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 24 (2): 91–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005090, S2CID 242632087
Ternes, Elmar (1992), "The Breton language", in MacAulay, Donald (ed.), The Celtic Languages, Cambridge University Press, pp. 371–452, ISBN 0-521-23127-2
Trudgill, Peter (2009), "Greek Dialect Vowel Systems, Vowel Dispersion Theory, and Sociolinguistic Typology", Journal of Greek Linguistics, 9 (1): 80–97, doi:10.1163/156658409X12500896406041
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Vol. 2: The British Isles (pp. i–xx, 279–466), Vol. 3: Beyond the British Isles (pp. i–xx, 467–674). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511611759, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511611766. ISBN 0-52128540-2 , 0-52128541-0 .
Zimmer, Karl; Orgun, Orhan (1992), "Turkish (Illustrations of the IPA)", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 22 (1–2), International Phonetic Association: 43–45, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004588

External links

List of languages with [ø̞] on PHOIBLE

[FOOTNOTETernes1992433-1] 1 2 Ternes (1992), p. 433.

[FOOTNOTERecasens199680–81-2] Recasens (1996), pp. 80–81.

[3] "Aplicació al català dels principis de transcripció de l'associació fonètica internacional" [Application to Catalan of the transcription principles of the International Phonetic Association] (PDF) (in Catalan). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-01-26.

[FOOTNOTEBasbøll200546-4] Basbøll (2005), p. 46.

[5] Basbøll & Wagner (1985), p. 40, cited in Basbøll (2005), p. 48.

[FOOTNOTEPeters2010241-6] Peters (2010), p. 241.

[FOOTNOTEWells1982305-7] 1 2 Wells (1982), p. 305.

[FOOTNOTEWells1982607-8] 1 2 Wells (1982), p. 607.

[FOOTNOTERocaJohnson1999188-9] 1 2 Roca & Johnson (1999), p. 188.

[FOOTNOTEBauerWarren2004582,_591-10] Bauer & Warren (2004), pp. 582, 591.

[FOOTNOTELass2002116-11] 1 2 Lass (2002), p. 116.

[FOOTNOTEWells1982381-12] Wells (1982), p. 381.

[FOOTNOTEPenhallurick2004104-13] Penhallurick (2004), p. 104.

[FOOTNOTECollinsMees199095-14] Collins & Mees (1990), p. 95.

[FOOTNOTEConnolly1990125-15] Connolly (1990), p. 125.

[FOOTNOTECollinsMees2003299-16] Collins & Mees (2003), p. 299.

[17] Peterson (2000), cited in Árnason (2011), p. 76.

[FOOTNOTEIivonenHarnud200560,_66-18] Iivonen & Harnud (2005), pp. 60, 66.

[FOOTNOTESuomiToivanenYlitalo200821-19] Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo (2008), p. 21.

[FOOTNOTETrudgill200986–87-20] 1 2 3 Trudgill (2009), pp. 86–87.

[FOOTNOTESzende199492-21] Szende (1994), p. 92.

[FOOTNOTEBrodersen2011-22] Brodersen (2011).

[FOOTNOTEÁrnason201157–60-23] Árnason (2011), pp. 57–60.

[FOOTNOTELee1999121-24] Lee (1999), p. 121.

[FOOTNOTERomanian_Academy2005?-25] 1 2 Romanian Academy (2005), p. ?.

[FOOTNOTEZimmerOrgun199244-26] Zimmer & Orgun (1992), p. 44.

[FOOTNOTEGökselKerslake200511-27] Göksel & Kerslake (2005), p. 11.

[FOOTNOTEEngstrand199043-28] Engstrand (1990), p. 43.

[FOOTNOTEElmquist191533-29] Elmquist (1915), p. 33.

[FOOTNOTEPelzerBoersma20191146–1147-30] Pelzer & Boersma (2019), pp. 1146–1147.

[FOOTNOTEPersson2024604-31] Persson (2024), p. 604.

[FOOTNOTEPersson2024§3.2.1,_§4-32] Persson (2024), §3.2.1, §4.