A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as sounding brighter than the back vowels. The front vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
- close front unrounded vowel
- close front rounded vowel
- close-mid front unrounded vowel
- close-mid front rounded vowel
- open-mid front unrounded vowel
- open-mid front rounded vowel
- near-open front unrounded vowel
- open front unrounded vowel
- open front rounded vowel
Read more about Front Vowel: Effect On Preceding Consonant
Famous quotes containing the words front and/or vowel:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)