Near-back vowel

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A near-back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as in a back vowel, but slightly further forward in the mouth. The near-back vowel identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet is:

• near-close near-back rounded vowel [ʊ]

Vowels are made by opening your mouth and letting air come out while your vocal cords vibrate. They are voiced by definition. Vowels are the sounds that you sing; opera singers just move from one vowel or one note to another vowel.

The back vowels are going from close to open. They are the vowels of lewd, look, load, laud, and Lawd, as pronounced in a rich stage dialect. The vowel of Lawd is close to the sound you make when you have to open your mouth at a doctor's that he can see the back of your throat. There, you open your mouth and bear down your tongue as far as possible. The sound that you then have to make is a back vowel.

Examples for near-back vowels are the following:

General American English and Received Pronunciation: bull, bush, full, pull, push, put, book, brook, cook, foot, good, hood, hook, look, shook, stood, took, wood, wool, could, should, would, wolf

General American English only: hoof

There is an enormous variability in the vowels of these words all over the world. This variability is the basic appearance of what we call accents or differences in pronunciation depending on dialects.