Near-open front unrounded vowel.html



Vowels

v • d • e

See also: IPA, Consonants

[  • discuss • enlarge ]	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ · ʏ ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right
represents a rounded vowel.

IPA – number	325
IPA – text	æ
IPA – image
Entity	æ
X-SAMPA	{
Kirshenbaum	&
Sound sample (help·info)

The near-open 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 æ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is {. The IPA symbol is the lowercase ae ligature, and both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash".

Features

• Its vowel height is near-open, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but slightly more constricted.
• 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.

Occurrence

References

Bibliography

• Holes, Clive (2004), Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties, Georgetown University Press, ISBN 1589010221
• Jones, Daniel & Ward Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press