Rounded vowels

In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a rounded vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, and back vowels tend to be rounded. However, some languages, such as French and German, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height, and Vietnamese distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. Alekano has only unrounded vowels. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, U+0339  ̹ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW and U+031C  ̜ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW, to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively. The 'more' and 'less rounded' diacritics are sometimes also used with consonants to indicate degrees of labialization.

There are two types of vowel rounding: protrusion and compression. In protruded rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together and the lips protrude like a tube, with their inner surface visible. In compressed rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together, but the lips are also drawn together horizontally ("compressed") and do not protrude, with only their outer surface visible. That is, in protruded vowels the inner surfaces of the lips form the opening (thus the alternate term endolabial), whereas in compressed vowels it is the margins of the lips which form the opening (thus exolabial). Catford (1982:172) observes that back and central rounded vowels, such as German /o/ and /u/, are typically protruded, whereas front rounded vowels such as German /ø/ and /y/ are typically compressed. Back or central compressed vowels and front protruded vowels are uncommon, and a contrast between the two types has been found to be phonemic in only one instance.

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