Mid-central vowel
| Mid central vowel | |||
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| ə | |||
| IPA number | 322 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ə |
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| Unicode (hex) | U+0259 | ||
| X-SAMPA | @ |
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| Kirshenbaum | @ |
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| Braille |  |
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| Sound | |||
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| Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded | |||||||||||||||||||
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IPA help • IPA key • chart •  chart with audio •
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| Mid central rounded vowel | |
|---|---|
| ɵ̞ | |
| ə̹ | |
| ɞ̝ |
The mid central vowel (also known as schwa) is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ə⟩, a rotated lowercase letter e.
While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association does not define the roundedness of [ə], it is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes the pronunciation of the unrounded variant as follows: "[ə] is a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity and vocalising." To produce the rounded variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips.
Afrikaans contrasts unrounded and rounded mid central vowels; the latter is usually transcribed with ⟨œ⟩. The contrast is not very stable, and many speakers use an unrounded vowel in both cases.
Some languages, such as Danish and Luxembourgish, have a mid central vowel that is variably rounded. In some other languages, things are more complicated, as the change in rounding is accompanied with the change in height and/or backness. For instance, in Dutch, the unrounded allophone of /ə/ is mid central unrounded [ə], but its word-final rounded allophone is close-mid near-front rounded [ʏ̞], practically the same as the main allophone of /ʏ/.
The symbol ⟨ə⟩ is often used for any unstressed obscure vowel, regardless of its precise quality. For instance, the English vowel transcribed ⟨ə⟩ is a central unrounded vowel that can be close-mid [ɘ], mid [ə] or open-mid [ɜ], depending on the environment.
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Wikipedia