Near-close near-back unrounded vowel

The near-close near-back unrounded vowel or near-high near-back unrounded vowel, is a type of a vowel sound, used in a few spoken languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet can represent this sound in a number of ways (see the box on the right), but arguably the most common symbol is ⟨ɯ̽⟩ (mid-centralized [ɯ]), a symbol equivalent to a more complex ⟨ɯ̞̈⟩ (lowered and centralized [ɯ]), or sometimes with the old convention of ⟨ω⟩.

Theoretically, it can also be represented in the IPA as ⟨ʊ̜⟩ (less rounded [ʊ]), but because [ʊ] is defined by Handbook of the International Phonetic Association as rounded (rather than unspecified for rounding as [ə] and [ɐ]), the symbol ⟨ʊ̜⟩ can also signify a weakly rounded [ʊ], rather than a fully unrounded vowel that is described in this article.

The near-close back unrounded vowel, which differs from its near-back counterpart in that it is a lowered, but not centralized close back unrounded vowel has not been reported to occur in any language, but it can be transcribed in the IPA as ⟨ɯ̞⟩ or ⟨ɤ̝⟩, or sometimes with the old convention of ⟨ω̠⟩.

Roundedness

In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, whereas unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, whereas back vowels tend to be rounded. But some languages, such as French and German, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height, whereas Vietnamese distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. Alekano has only unrounded vowels. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, U+0339  ̹ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW and U+031C  ̜ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW, to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively. These 'more' and 'less rounded' diacritics are sometimes also used with consonants to indicate degrees of labialization.