Open-mid 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

Legend: unrounded • rounded

An open-mid vowel (also mid-open vowel, low-mid vowel, mid-low vowel or half-open vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately one third of the way from an open vowel to a close vowel.¹²

Examples

Some of the open-mid vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

open-mid front unrounded vowel [ɛ]
open-mid front rounded vowel [œ]
open-mid central unrounded vowel [ɜ] (older publications may use ⟨ɛ̈⟩)
open-mid central rounded vowel [ɞ] (older publications may use ⟨ɔ̈⟩)
open-mid back unrounded vowel [ʌ]
open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ]

Other open-mid vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels.

References

Ogbonna, Elisha O. (2022). Advanced Igbo Language: A Simplified Guide to Igbo Orthography Phonology, Morphology and Lexicology. La Vergne: Prinoelio Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-1-77774-614-8.
Wayland, Ratree (2018). Phonetics: A Practical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-10841-834-8.

[1] Ogbonna, Elisha O. (2022). Advanced Igbo Language: A Simplified Guide to Igbo Orthography Phonology, Morphology and Lexicology. La Vergne: Prinoelio Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-1-77774-614-8.

[2] Wayland, Ratree (2018). Phonetics: A Practical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-10841-834-8.

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