Close-mid back unrounded vowel

Close-mid back unrounded vowel
ɤ
IPA number	315
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɤ
Unicode (hex)	U+0264
X-SAMPA	7
Kirshenbaum	o-
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The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Acoustically it is a close-mid back-central unrounded vowel.^[1] Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨ɤ⟩, called "ram's horns". It is distinct from the symbol for the voiced velar fricative, ⟨ɣ⟩, which has a descender. Despite that, some writings^[2] use this symbol for the voiced velar fricative, anyway.

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".

Before the 1989 IPA Convention, the symbol for the close-mid back unrounded vowel was ⟨⟩, sometimes called "baby gamma", which has a flat top. The symbol was revised to be ⟨⟩, "ram's horns", with a rounded top, in order to better differentiate it from the Latin gamma ⟨ɣ⟩.^[3] Unicode provides only U+0264 ɤ LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN (HTML ɤ), but in some fonts this character may appear as a "baby gamma" instead.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ɯ̽ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ •əɵ̞ •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ •ɐɞ̞ •aɶ •äɒ̈ •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
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• Its vowel height is close-mid, also known as high-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel (a high 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. Note that unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.

• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Alekano		gamó	[ɣɑmɤʔ]	'cucumber'
Chinese	Mandarin	喝/hē	[xɤ˥]	'to drink'	See Standard Chinese phonology
	Taiwanese Hokkien	蚵/ô	[ɤ˧]	'oyster'	Mostly southern Taiwanese speech
English	Cape Flats dialect[4]	foot	[fɤt]	'foot'	Possible realization of /ʊ/; may be [u] or [ʉ] instead.[4]
	Indian South African[5]				Possible realization of /ʊ/; may be a weakly rounded [ʊ] instead.[5]
	Received Pronunciation[6]	long ago	[lɒŋ ɤ̟ˈɡəʊ̯]	'long ago'	Near-back; possible allophone of /ə/ between velar consonants.[6] See English phonology
	White South African[7]	pill	[pʰɤ̟ɫ]	'pill'	Near-back; allophone of /ɪ/ before the velarised allophone of /l/.[7] Also described as close [ɯ̟].[8]
Irish	Ulster[9]	Uladh	[ɤ̟l̪ˠu]	'Ulster'	Near-back.[10] See Irish phonology
Kaingang[11]		[ˈᵐbɤ]		'tail'	Varies between back [ɤ] and central [ɘ][12]
Korean	Gyeongsang dialect	거기/geogi	[ˈkɤ̘ɡɪ]	'there'	See Korean phonology
Northern Tiwa	Taos dialect	[ˌmã̀ˑˈpɤ̄u̯mã̄]		'it was squeezed'	May be central [ɘ] instead. See Taos phonology
Önge		önge	[ˈɤŋe]	'man'
Scottish Gaelic		doirbh	[d̪̊ɤrʲɤv]	'difficult'	See Scottish Gaelic phonology
Sundanese		ieu	[iɤ]	'this'
Thai[13]		เธอ/thoe	[tʰɤ̟ː]	'you'	Near-back[13]
Xumi	Upper[14]	[^Htsɤ]		'crown of a head'	Occasional realization of /o/.[14]

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

References

1. Geoff Lindsey (2013) The vowel space, Speech Talk
2. Such as Booij (1999) and Nowikow (2012).
3. Nicholas, Nick (2003). "Greek-derived IPA symbols". Greek Unicode Issues. University of California, Irvine.
4. Finn (2004), p. 970.
5. Mesthrie (2004), p. 956.
6. Gimson (2014), p. 138.
7. Wells (1982), p. 617.
8. Bowerman (2004), p. 936.
9. Ní Chasaide (1999:114–115)
10. Ní Chasaide (1999:114)
11. Jolkesky (2009), pp. 676–677 and 682.
12. Jolkesky (2009), pp. 676 and 682.
13. Tingsabadh & Abramson (1993), p. 25.
14. Chirkova, Chen & Kocjančič Antolík (2013), p. 389.

Bibliography

• Booij, Geert (1999), The phonology of Dutch, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-823869-X
• Bowerman, Sean (2004), "White South African English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive, A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 931–942, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Chirkova, Katia; Chen, Yiya; Kocjančič Antolík, Tanja (2013), "Xumi, Part 2: Upper Xumi, the Variety of the Upper Reaches of the Shuiluo River" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association 43 (3): 381–396, doi:10.1017/S0025100313000169
• Finn, Peter (2004), "Cape Flats English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive, A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 934–984, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Gimson, Alfred Charles (2014), Cruttenden, Alan, ed., Gimson's Pronunciation of English (8th ed.), Routledge, ISBN 9781444183092
• Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2009), "Fonologia e prosódia do Kaingáng falado em Cacique Doble", Anais do SETA (Campinas: Editora do IEL-UNICAMP) 3: 675–685
• Mesthrie, Rajend (2004), "Indian South African English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive, A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 953–963, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Ní Chasaide, Ailbhe (1999), "Irish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 111–16, ISBN 0-521-63751-1
• Nowikow, Wieczysław (2012) [First published 1992], Fonetyka hiszpańska (3rd ed.), Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, ISBN 978-83-01-16856-8
• Tingsabadh, M. R. Kalaya; Abramson, Arthur S. (1993), "Thai", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (1): 24–28, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004746
• Wells, John C. (1982), Accents of English 3: Beyond The British Isles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-28541-0