Near-close vowel
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Close | |||||
Near-close | |||||
Close-mid | |||||
Mid | |||||
Open-mid | |||||
Near-open | |||||
Open |
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right
represents a rounded vowel.
represents a rounded vowel.
A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-close vowels. The near-close vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: