Near-open central vowel
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Legend: unrounded • rounded |
The near-open central vowel, or near-low central vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɐ⟩, a rotated lowercase double-story a.
In English this vowel is most typically transcribed with the symbol ⟨ʌ⟩, i.e. as if it were open-mid back. That pronunciation is still found in some dialects, but many speakers use a central vowel like [ɐ] or [ɜ]. To avoid the trap–strut merger, Standard Southern British English is moving away from the [ɐ] quality towards [ʌ] found in RP spoken in the first half of the 20th century (e.g. in Daniel Jones's speech).
Much like ⟨ə⟩, ⟨ɐ⟩ is a versatile symbol that is not defined for roundedness and that can be used for vowels that are near-open central, near-open near-front, near-open near-back, open-mid central, open central or an (often unstressed) vowel with variable height, backness and/or roundedness that is produced in that general area. For open central unrounded vowels transcribed with ⟨ɐ⟩, see open central unrounded vowel.
When the usual transcription of the near-open near-front and the near-open near-back variants is different from ⟨ɐ⟩, they are listed in near-open front unrounded vowel and open back unrounded vowel or open back rounded vowel, respectively.
The near-open central unrounded vowel is sometimes the only open vowel in a language and then is typically transcribed with ⟨a⟩.
Features
- Its vowel height is near-open, also known as near-low, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but is slightly more constricted – that is, the tongue is positioned similarly to a low vowel, but slightly higher.
- Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
- It is undefined for roundedness, which means that it can be either rounded or unrounded. In practice however, the unrounded variant is more common.
Occurrence
In the following list, ⟨ɐ⟩ is assumed to be unrounded. The rounded variant (ⓘ) is transcribed as ⟨ɐ̹⟩. Some instances of the latter may actually be fully open.