Near-open central vowel

Near-open central vowel
ɐ
IPA number	324
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɐ
Unicode (hex)	U+0250
X-SAMPA	6
Kirshenbaum	&"
Image
Sound

The near-open central vowel, or near-low central vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɐ⟩, a rotated lowercase letter a.

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", and these are the only terms found in introductory textbooks on phonetics such as those by Peter Ladefoged.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ ə •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ æ ɐ •aɶ ä •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
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• Its vowel height is near-open, also known as near-low, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but is slightly more constricted – that is, the tongue is positioned similarly to a low vowel, but slightly higher.
• Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
• It may be rounded or unrounded. If precision is desired, the symbol for the open-mid central unrounded vowel may be used with a lowering diacritic, for the unrounded near-open central vowel, [ɜ̞], and the symbol for the open-mid central rounded vowel with a lowering diacritic may be used for the rounded near-open central vowel, [ɞ̞].

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Arabic	Standard	قطة	[qitˤːɐ]	'cat'	Allophone of long and short /a/ before a word boundary. See Arabic phonology
Bulgarian		ъгъл	[ˈɤ̞ɡɐɫ]	'angle'
Catalan	Barcelona metropolitan area	se	[sɐ]	'itself'	Typically transcribed as /ə/. See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Cantonese	心 sam1	[sɐm˥]	'heart'	See Cantonese phonology
Danish	Standard	ånd	[ɐ̠nˀ]	'spirit'	Somewhat retracted, often transcribed /ʌ/. See Danish phonology
Dawsahak		[nɐ]		'to give'
Dutch	Limburg	letter	[ˈlɛtɐ]	'letter'	Not all dialects. Corresponds to /ər/ in standard Dutch. See Dutch phonology
	The Hague
English	California	nut	[nɐt]	'nut'	⟨ʌ⟩ may be used to transcribe this vowel as it corresponds to /ʌ/ in some other dialects. In South Africa it may be as open as ä for some speakers, and in New Zealand it may be fronted to [ɐ̟]. See English phonology
	New Zealand
	RP
	South African
	Scottish	stack	[stɐ̟k]	'stack'	Fronted, corresponds to æ (also ɑː in some dialects) in other dialects.
	Inland Northern American	bet	[bɐt]	'bet'	Variation of /ɛ/ used in some places whose accents have undergone the Northern cities vowel shift.
German	Standard	oder	[ˈoːdɐ]	'or'	Allophone of /ər/ used in many dialects. See German phonology
Greek		ακακία akakía	[ɐkɐˈci.ɐ]	'acacia'	See Modern Greek phonology
Korean		발 bal	[pɐl]	'foot'	Somewhat lowered. More often transcribed with ⟨a⟩. See Korean phonology
Portuguese	Fluminense	cana-de-açúcar	[ˈkɜ̃nə dʑ ɐˈsukɐχ]	'sugarcane'	In complementary distribution with /a/. Raised to ɜ̝ in other variants (where it is a phoneme). See Portuguese phonology
	General Brazilian		[ˈkɐ̃nɐ dʑ ɐ̞ˈsukɐ̞h]
	European	pão	[pɐ̃w̃]	'bread'	Stressed vowel, mostly as a phonemic nasal vowel (when not followed by a nasal stop). Raised otherwise.
Russian		голова	[ɡəɫɐˈva]	'head'	Occurs mostly immediately before stressed syllables. See Russian phonology
Vietnamese		ăn	[ɐn]	'to eat'	See Vietnamese phonology

See also

• Turned a
• Index of phonetics articles

References

• Arvaniti, Amalia (2007), "Greek Phonetics: The State of the Art", Journal of Greek Linguistics 8: 97–208 
• Barbosa, Plínio A.; Albano, Eleonora C. (2004), "Brazilian Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 227–232, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001756 
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223 
• Grønnum, Nina (1998), "Danish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28 (1–2): 99–105, doi:10.1017/S0025100300006290 
• Harrison, Phil (1997), The Relative Complexity of Catalan Vowels and Their Perceptual Correlates, UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9 
• Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W (2004)), in Upton, Clive, A handbook of varieties of English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 
• Ladefoged, Peter (1999), "American English", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 41–44 
• Lee, Hyun Bok (1999), "Korean", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 120–122, ISBN 0-521-63751-1 
• Mangold, Max (2005), Das Aussprachewörterbuch, Duden, ISBN 9783411040667 
• Padgett, Jaye; Tabain, Marija (2005), "Adaptive Dispersion Theory and Phonological Vowel Reduction in Russian", Phonetica 62 (1): 14–54, doi:10.1159/000087223, PMID 16116302 
• Rafel, Joaquim (1999), Aplicació al català dels principis de transcripció de l'Associació Fonètica Internacional (in Catalan) (3rd ed.), Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, ISBN 84-7283-446-8 
• Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (1999), A Course in Phonology, Blackwell Publishing 
• Scobbie, James M.; Gordeeva, Olga B.; Matthews, Benjamin (2006), Acquisition of Scottish English Phonology: an overview, Edinburgh: QMU Speech Science Research Centre Working Papers 
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37–41, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004266