Open front unrounded vowel
| Open front unrounded vowel | |
|---|---|
| a | |
| a̟ | |
| æ̞ | |
| IPA number | 304 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | a |
| Unicode (hex) | U+0061 |
| X-SAMPA | a or a_+ or {_o |
| Kirshenbaum | a |
| Braille |  |
| Sound | |
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| Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded | |||||||||||||||||||
| This table contains phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] | |||||||||||||||||||
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IPA help • IPA key • chart •  chart with audio •
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The open front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. It is one of the eight primary cardinal vowels, not directly intended to correspond to a vowel sound of a specific language but rather to serve as a fundamental reference point in a phonetic measuring system.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is ⟨a⟩, and in the IPA vowel chart it is positioned at the lower-left corner. However, the accuracy of the quadrilateral vowel chart is disputed, and the sound has been analyzed acoustically as an extra-open/low unrounded central vowel at a position where the front/back distinction has lost its significance. There are also differing interpretations of the exact quality of the vowel: the classic sound recording of [a] by Daniel Jones is slightly more front but not quite as open as that by John Wells.
In practice, it is considered normal by many phoneticians to use the symbol ⟨a⟩ for an open central unrounded vowel and instead approximate the open front unrounded vowel with ⟨æ⟩ (which officially signifies a near-open front unrounded vowel). This is the usual practice, for example, in the historical study of the English language. The loss of separate symbols for open and near-open front vowels is usually considered unproblematic, because the perceptual difference between the two is quite small, and very few languages contrast the two. If one needs to specify that the vowel is front, they can use symbols like ⟨a̟⟩ (advanced [a]), or ⟨æ̞⟩ (lowered [æ]), with the latter being more common.
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