Close-mid front rounded vowel

Vowels

v • d • e

See also: IPA, Consonants

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ · ʏ ɪ̈ · ʊ̈ ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents
a rounded vowel. Vowel length is indicated by appending ː.

IPA – number	310
IPA – text	ø
IPA – image
Entity	ø
X-SAMPA	2
Kirshenbaum	Y
Sound sample (help·info)

The close-mid 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 ø, a lowercase letter o with a diagonal stroke through it, derived from the Danish, Norwegian and Faroese alphabets which use the letter to represent this sound. The symbol is commonly referred to as "o, slash" in English. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 2.

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 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 roundedness is compressed, which means that the margins of the lips approach one another, so that the inner surfaces are not exposed.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Danish		købe	[ˈkøːb̥ə]	'buy'	See Danish phonology
Dutch		keuken	[køːkən]	'kitchen'	See Dutch phonology
Faroese		øl	[øːl]	'beer'
Finnish		tyttö	[tyt:ø]	'girl'
French[1]		peu	[pø]	'few'	See French phonology
German		schön	[ʃøːn]	'beautiful'	See German phonology
Hungarian[2]		nő	[nøː]	'woman'	See Hungarian phonology
Korean		쇠 soe	[søː]	'iron'	May be diphthongized to [we] by younger speakers. See Korean phonology
Ngwe	Mmockngie dialect	[nøɣə̀]		'sun'
Norwegian		søt	[søːt]	'sweet'	See Norwegian phonology
Rotuman		mösʻạki	[møːsʔɔki]	'to put to bed'
Swedish		öl	[øːl] (help·info)	'beer'	See Swedish phonology
Western Lombard		cöör/coeur	[køːr]	'heart'
Estonian		köök	[køːk]	'kitchen'

Mid front rounded vowel

Some languages have a mid front rounded 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 [ø] is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic may be used: [ø̞].

Occurrence

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

References

Bibliography

• 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 
• Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline L (1993), "Illustrations of the IPA:French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73-76 
• Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999). A Course in Phonology. Blackwell Publishing. 
• Szende, Tamás (1994), "Illustrations of the IPA:Hungarian", Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 24 (2): 91-94