CLOSE BACK COMPRESSED VOWEL

The 'close back compressed vowel' is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. There is no symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound.

Contents

Features

Occurs in

Features

★ Its vowel height is close, 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 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 compressed, which means the corners of the mouth are drawn slightly together and the lips may be compressed horizontally, but do not protrude.

Occurs in

There is no official diacritic for compression. An old diacritic for labialization, , will be used here as an ''ad hoc'' symbol.

★ Swedish: '''o'r'o''' or , 'unease', 'worry'

★ Japanese: 空気 (''k'uu'ki'') , 'air', 'atmosphere'
The long /u/ in Swedish is frequently diphthongized, and the glide is tellingly the bilabial approximant rather than the prototypically rounded .
Norwegian has a similar vowel. These languages also have close central compressed vowels and close front compressed vowels.
The Japanese vowel '' is perhaps a near-back vowel. Since there is no diacritic for compression, the transcription is commonly used; this captures both the lack of rounding common to back vowels and the somewhat fronted articulation (unrounded vowels tend to be more front than rounded vowels). When Japanese follows /h/, the consonant tellingly assimilates as a bilabial fricative ''.