CLOSE-MID BACK UNROUNDED VOWEL

The 'close-mid back unrounded vowel' is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is , called "ram's horns". It is not to be confused with the symbol for the voiced velar fricative, , which has a descender.
Before 1989, the symbol for this sound was , sometimes called "baby gamma", which has a flat top. Now the symbol is , "ram's horns", with a rounded top. Unicode provides a space only for LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN (U+0264), but in some fonts this character may appear as a "baby gamma" instead.

Contents

Features

Occurrence

Mid back unrounded vowel

Occurrence

Features

★ Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.

★ Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.

★ Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Alekano	''gam'ó'''		'cucumber'
Estonian	''k'õ'rv''		'ear'
Irish	'''U'ladh''		'Ulster'	See Irish phonology
Mandarin	喝/''h'ē'''		'to drink'	See Standard Mandarin
Onge			'man'
Scottish Gaelic	''d''oi'rbh''		'difficult'
Taiwanese	蚵/'''ô'''		'oyster'	Mostly southern Taiwanese speech
Vietnamese	''t'ơ'''		'silk'	See Vietnamese phonology

Mid back unrounded vowel

Some languages have a 'mid back unrounded vowel', distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic may be used: .
Several of the languages listed above may have mid rather than close-mid vowels.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, the lowering diacritic has been omitted for the sake of simplicity

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Bulgarian	п'ъ'т		'path'	Somewhat fronted