Close front rounded vowel
| Close front rounded vowel | |
|---|---|
| y | |
| IPA number | 309 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) |
y |
| Unicode (hex) | U+0079 |
| X-SAMPA |
y |
| Kirshenbaum |
y |
| Braille |
 |
| Sound | |
 source · help | |
The close front rounded vowel, or high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨y⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y. Across many languages, it is most commonly represented orthographically as ⟨ü⟩ (in German and Turkish) or ⟨y⟩, but also as ⟨u⟩ (in French and a few other Romance languages); ⟨iu⟩/⟨yu⟩ (in the romanization of various Asian languages); ⟨ű⟩ (in Hungarian for the long duration version; the short version is the ⟨ü⟩ found in other European alphabets); or ⟨уь⟩ (in Cyrillic-based writing systems such as that for Chechen)
Short /y/ and long /yː/ occurred in pre-Modern Greek. In the Attic and Ionic dialects of Ancient Greek, front [y yː] developed by fronting from back /u uː/ around the 6th to 7th century BC. A little later, the diphthong /yi/ when not before another vowel monophthongized and merged with long /yː/. In Koine Greek, the diphthong /oi/ changed to [yː], likely through the intermediate stages [øi] and [øː]. Through vowel shortening in Koine Greek, long /yː/ merged with short /y/. Later, /y/ unrounded to [i], yielding the pronunciation of Modern Greek. For more information, see the articles on Ancient Greek and Koine Greek phonology.
The close front rounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the labialized palatal approximant [ɥ]. The two are almost identical featurally. [y] alternates with [ɥ] in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages, ⟨y̯⟩ with the non-syllabic diacritic and ⟨ɥ⟩ are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound.
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".
In most languages, this rounded vowel is pronounced with compressed lips ('exolabial'). However, in a few cases the lips are protruded ('endolabial').
Close front compressed vowel
Features
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- Its vowel height is close, also known as high, which means the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that rounded front vowels are often centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-front.
- Its roundedness is compressed, which means that the margins of the lips are tense and drawn together in such a way that the inner surfaces are not exposed.
Occurrence
Because front rounded vowels are assumed to have compression, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some examples in the table below may actually have protrusion.
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | uur | [yːr] | 'hour' | ||
| Albanian | dy | [dy] | 'two' | ||
| Azeri | güllə | [ɟylˈlæ] | 'bullet' | ||
| Basque | Souletin | hirü | [hiɾy] | 'three' | |
| Bavarian | Amstetten dialect[1] | Near-front.[1] | |||
| Breton | tut | [tyːd] | 'people' | ||
| Catalan | Northern[2] | but | [byt̪] | 'aim' | Found in Occitan and French loanwords. See Catalan phonology |
| Chechen | уьш / üş | [yʃ] | 'they' | ||
| Chinese | Cantonese | 書 syu1 | [syː˥] | 'book' | See Cantonese phonology |
| Mandarin | 绿 lǜ | [ly˥˩] | 'green' | See Mandarin phonology | |
| Wu | 软 gniu | [ɲy˩˧] | 'soft' | ||
| Chuvash | ÿс / üs | [ys] | 'to grow' | ||
| Cornish | tus | [tyːz] | 'people' | Corresponds to /iː/ in "Late" dialect. | |
| Danish | Standard[3][4][5][6][7] | synlig | [ˈs̺y̠ːnli] | 'visible' | Near-front.[3][4][5][6][7] See Danish phonology |
| Dutch | Standard Belgian[8] | fuut |  [fy̠t] | 'grebe' | Near-front,[8] also described as near-close [ʏ].[9] See Dutch phonology |
| English | General South African[10] | few | [fjy:] | 'few' | Some younger speakers, especially females. Others pronounce a more central vowel [ʉː]. |
| Scouse[11] | May be central [ʉː] instead. | ||||
| Ulster[12] | Long allophone of /u/; occurs only after /j/. See English phonology | ||||
| Scottish | [fjy] | Some dialects. Corresponds to [u ~ ʉ] in other dialects. See English phonology | |||
| Estonian | üks | [yks] | 'one' | ||
| Finnish[13] | yksi | [ˈy̠ksi] | 'one' | Near-front.[14] See Finnish phonology | |
| French[15] | chute | [ʃyt̪] | 'fall' | See French phonology | |
| German | Standard[16] | über | [ˈʔy̠ːbɐ] | 'above' | Near-front.[16] See German phonology |
| Hungarian[17] | tű | [t̪y̠ː] | 'pin' | Near-front.[17] See Hungarian phonology | |
| Lombard | düü | [dyː] | 'two' | ||
| Mongolian[18] | түймэр tüimer | [tʰyːmɘɾɘ̆] | 'prairie fire' | ||
| North Frisian | hüüs | [hyːs] | 'hoarse' | ||
| Occitan | Gascon | lua | [ˈlyo̞] | 'moon' | See Occitan phonology |
| Languedocien | luna | [ˈlyno̞] | |||
| Provençal | |||||
| Piedmontese | curt | [kyrt] | 'short' | ||
| Portuguese[19] | Brazilian | déjà vu | [d̪e̞ʒɐ ˈvy] | 'déjà vu' | Found in French and German loanwords. Speakers with little contact with target language may instead use [u], if unstressed, or [i], if stressed. See Portuguese phonology |
| Scots | buit | [byt] | 'boot' | ||
| Turkish[20] | güneş | [ɟy̠ˈneʃ] | 'sun' | Near-front.[20] See Turkish phonology | |
Close front protruded vowel
| Close front protruded vowel | |
|---|---|
| y̫ | |
| yʷ | |
| iʷ |
Catford notes that most languages with rounded front and back vowels use distinct types of labialization, protruded back vowels and compressed front vowels. However, a few languages, such as Scandinavian ones, have protruded front vowels. One of these, Swedish, even contrasts the two types of rounding in front vowels (see near-close near-front rounded vowel, with Swedish examples of both types of rounding).
As there are no diacritics in the IPA to distinguish protruded and compressed rounding, an old diacritic for labialization, ⟨ ̫⟩, will be used here as an ad hoc symbol for protruded front vowels. Another possible transcription is ⟨yʷ⟩ or ⟨iʷ⟩ (a close front vowel modified by endolabialization), but this could be misread as a diphthong.
Features
- Its vowel height is near-close, also known as near-high, which means the tongue is not quite so constricted as a close vowel (high vowel).
- Its vowel backness is near-front. also known as front-central or centralized front, which means the tongue is positioned almost as far forward as a front vowel.
- Its roundedness is protruded, which means that the corners of the lips are drawn together, and the inner surfaces exposed.
Occurrence
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Norwegian | Standard Eastern[21] | syd | [sy̫ːd] | 'south' | See Norwegian phonology |
| Swedish | Central Standard[22] | yla | [y̫ːl̪ä] | 'howl' | May be a sequence [yɥ] instead.[23] See Swedish phonology |
See also
- Near-close near-front protruded vowel
- Close central protruded vowel
- Index of phonetics articles
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Traunmüller (1982), cited in Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:290)
- ↑ Recasens (1996:69)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Grønnum (1998:100)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Grønnum (2005:268)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Grønnum (2003)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen (2000:17)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Ladefoged & Johnson (2010:227)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Verhoeven (2005:245)
- ↑ Collins & Mees (2003:132)
- ↑ Lass (2002:116)
- ↑ Watson (2007:357)
- ↑ "Irish English and Ulster English" (PDF). p. 6.
- ↑ Iivonen & Harnud (2005:60, 66)
- ↑ Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo (2008:21)
- ↑ Fougeron & Smith (1993:73)
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Kohler (1999:87), Mangold (2005:37)
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Szende (1994:92)
- ↑ Iivonen & Harnud (2005:62, 66–67)
- ↑ (Portuguese) The perception of German vowels by Portuguese-German bilinguals: do returned emigrants suffer phonological erosion? Pages 57 and 68.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Zimmer & Orgun (1999:155)
- ↑ Vanvik (1979:13 and 19)
- ↑ Engstrand (1999:140–141)
- ↑ Engstrand (1999:141)
Bibliography
- Allan, Robin; Holmes, Philip; Lundskær-Nielsen, Tom (2000), Danish: An Essential Grammar, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-19-824268-9
- Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003), The Phonetics of English and Dutch, Fifth Revised Edition (PDF), ISBN 9004103406
- Engstrand, Olle (1999), "Swedish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 140, ISBN 0-521-63751-1
- Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline L. (1993), "French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73–76, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004874
- Grønnum, Nina (1998), "Illustrations of the IPA: Danish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28 (1 & 2): 99–105, doi:10.1017/s0025100300006290
- Grønnum, Nina (2003), Why are the Danes so hard to understand?
- Grønnum, Nina (2005), Fonetik og fonologi, Almen og Dansk (3rd ed.), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, ISBN 87-500-3865-6
- Iivonen, Antti; Harnud, Huhe (2005), "Acoustical comparison of the monophthong systems in Finnish, Mongolian and Udmurt", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 59–71, doi:10.1017/S002510030500191X
- Kohler, Klaus J. (1999), "German", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 86–89, ISBN 0-521-65236-7
- Ladefoged, Peter; Johnson, Keith (2010), A Course in Phonetics (6th ed.), Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4282-3126-9
- Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
- Lass, Roger (2002), "South African English", in Mesthrie, Rajend, Language in South Africa, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521791052
- Mangold, Max (2005), Das Aussprachewörterbuch, Duden, ISBN 9783411040667
- Recasens, Daniel (1996), Fonètica descriptiva del català: assaig de caracterització de la pronúncia del vocalisme i el consonantisme català al segle XX (2nd ed.), Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, ISBN 978-84-7283-312-8
- Szende, Tamás (1994), "Hungarian", Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 24 (2): 91–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005090
- Traunmüller, Hartmut (1982), "Vokalismus in der westniederösterreichischen Mundart.", Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 2: 289–333, doi:10.1017/S0025100300006290
- Vanvik, Arne (1979), Norsk fonetik, Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo, ISBN 82-990584-0-6
- Verhoeven, Jo (2005), "Belgian Standard Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2): 243–247, doi:10.1017/S0025100305002173
- Watson, Kevin (2007), "Liverpool English" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (3): 351–360, doi:10.1017/s0025100307003180
- Suomi, Kari; Toivanen, Juhani; Ylitalo, Riikka (2008), Finish sound structure, ISBN 978-951-42-8983-5
- Zimmer, Karl; Orgun, Orhan (1999), "Turkish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (PDF), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–158, ISBN 0-521-65236-7
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