OPEN FRONT ROUNDED VOWEL

The 'open 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is &. The symbol is a small capital Œ. Note that , the lowercase version of the ligature, is used for the open-mid front rounded vowel.

Contents

Features

Occurrence

Features

★ Its vowel height is open, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth.

★ 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.

★ Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurrence

is not confirmed to exist as a phoneme in any language. A phoneme generally transcribed by this symbol is reported from the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian German. It is the rounded equivalent of , not of open , and so would be more narrowly transcribed as or . However, the vowel formants place Amstetten and one third of the way between and , matching the IPA definition for open-mid vowels.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Danish		example needed		--	See Danish phonology
German	Amstetten dialect	''S'eil'''		'rope'	See German phonology
Swedish		''h'ö'rt''		'heard' (supine)	See Swedish phonology