The open front rounded vowel, or low front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, not confirmed to be phonemic in any spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɶ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is &. The letter ⟨ɶ⟩ is a small caps rendition of ⟨Œ⟩. Note that ⟨œ⟩, the lowercase version of the ligature, is used for the open-mid front rounded vowel.
The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low", and these are the only terms found in introductory textbooks on phonetics such as those by Peter Ladefoged.
Read more about Open Front Rounded Vowel: Features, Occurrence
Famous quotes containing the words open, front, rounded and/or vowel:
“Don: Why are they closed? They’re all closed, every one of them.
Pawnbroker: Sure they are. It’s Yom Kippur.
Don: It’s what?
Pawnbroker: It’s Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.
Don: It is? So what about Kelly’s and Gallagher’s?
Pawnbroker: They’re closed, too. We’ve got an agreement. They keep closed on Yom Kippur and we don’t open on St. Patrick’s.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don’t deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)