Main vowel
All vowels or cardinal vowels ( English cardinal vowels are) vowels , by the Phoneticians Daniel Jones described. They are used as a reference to characterize the vowels of any language. As idealized sounds at the edges of the vowel trapezoid , the main vowels do not appear in their pure form in real languages or only appear approximately. The Cameroonian Niger-Congo language Ngwe is said to have eight vowels that are very similar to the eight primary main vowels.
There are other named vowels that are not counted among the main vowels, for example the middle central vowel [ ə ] within the vowel trapezoid.
The main vowels in the vowel trapezoid
List of main vowels
No. | IPA | X-SAMPA | description |
---|---|---|---|
1 | [i] | [i] | Unrounded closed front tongue vowel |
2 | [e] | [e] | Unrounded, semi-closed front tongue vowel |
3 | [ɛ] | [E] | Unrounded, half-open front tongue vowel |
4th | [a] | [a] | Unrounded open front tongue vowel |
5 | [ɑ] | [A] | Unrounded open back vowel |
6th | [ɔ] | [O] | Rounded half-open back vowel |
7th | [O] | [O] | Rounded, semi-closed back vowel |
8th | [u] | [u] | Rounded closed back vowel |
9 | [y] | [y] | Rounded closed front tongue vowel |
10 | [O] | [2] | Rounded semi-closed front tongue vowel |
11 | [œ] | [9] | Rounded half-open front tongue vowel |
12 | [ɶ] | [&] | Rounded open front tongue vowel |
13 | [ɒ] | [Q] | Rounded open back vowel |
14th | [ʌ] | [V] | Unrounded, half-open back vowel |
15th | [ɤ] | [7] | Unrounded, semi-closed back vowel |
16 | [ɯ] | [M] | Unrounded closed back vowel |
17th | [ɨ] | [1] | Unrounded closed central vowel |
18th | [ʉ] | [}] | Rounded closed central vowel |
Individual evidence
- ^ Ladefoged, Peter : Preliminaries to linguistic phonetics . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971, p. 67.
Web links
- Audio samples of the main vowels on the Utrecht University website, spoken by Daniel Jones
- Historical recording of the main vowels on Gimson's Pronunciation of English website, voiced by Daniel Jones