Closed vowel
With closed vowels are meant those vowels in which the mouth is the least open of all vowels. The angle of the two jaws is small, the tongue occupies a high position.
The "i", "ü" and "u" sounds are designated as "closed", while the "a" sounds are open vowels . The term closed vowel corresponds to the term high vowel . Between the “closed” and the “open” are the middle vowels , which are spoken with a middle mouth opening. With the middle vowels one can also distinguish between half-closed and half-open vowels .
German examples of closed vowels
Closed vowels are:
- [ɪ] (short) in "suffered"
- [i] (short) in "binary"
- [iː] (long) in "Lied, dir"
- [ʏ] (short) in "know"
- [y] (short) in "Physics"
- [y:] (long) in "desert"
- [ʊ] (short) in "Addiction"
- [u] (short) in "accommodating"
- [uː] (long) in "sucht".
The short vowels [i], [y] and [u] are restricted to foreign words; as they are stretched (English tense ) in contrast to the native short vowels [ɪ], [ʏ] and [ʊ], the corresponding unstretched (English lax are). If one carefully compares the stem vowel of the words “know”, “physics” and “desert”, the difference between these sounds becomes understandable.
literature
- Hadumod Bußmann (Ed.): Lexicon of Linguistics. 3rd updated and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-520-45203-0 , p. 739 (see scheme).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duden. Pronunciation dictionary. 6th, revised and updated edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2005, p. 30. ISBN 978-3-411-04066-7
