open front unrounded vowel

Vowels

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Front

N.-front

Central

N.-back

Back

Close

i • y

ɨ • ʉ

ɯ • u

ɪ • ʏ

• ʊ

e • ø

ɘ • ɵ

ɤ • o

ɛ • œ

ɜ • ɞ

ʌ • ɔ

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.

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

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.

The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_front_unrounded_vowel under GFDL