Close-mid front rounded vowel
| Close-mid front rounded vowel | |
|---|---|
| ø | |
| IPA number | 310 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | ø |
| Unicode (hex) | U+00F8 |
| X-SAMPA | 2 |
| Kirshenbaum | Y |
| Braille |  |
| Sound | |
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IPA help • IPA key • chart •  chart with audio •
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| Close-mid front protruded vowel | |
|---|---|
| ø̫ | |
| øʷ | |
| eʷ |
The close-mid front rounded vowel, or high-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Acoustically it is a close-mid front-central rounded vowel. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ø⟩, a lowercase letter o with a diagonal stroke through it, borrowed from the Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese languages, where the letter sometimes represents this sound. The symbol is commonly referred to as "o, slash" in English.
The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists prefer the terms "high" and "low".
The close-mid front compressed vowel is typically transcribed in IPA simply as ⟨ø⟩, which is the convention used in this article. There is no dedicated diacritic for compression in the IPA. However, the compression of the lips can be shown with the letter ⟨β̞⟩ as ⟨e͡β̞⟩ (simultaneous [e] and labial compression) or ⟨eᵝ⟩ ([e] modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic ⟨ ͍ ⟩ may also be used with a rounded vowel letter ⟨ø͍⟩ as an ad hoc symbol, but 'spread' technically means unrounded.
Catford notes 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).
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Wikipedia