Near-close vowel
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| Vowels | |||||
| front | near-front | central | near-back | back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| close | • | • | • | ||
| near-close | • | ||||
| close-mid | • | • | • | ||
| mid | |||||
| open-mid | • | • | • | ||
| near-open | |||||
| open | • | • | |||
| Table of vowels - List of vowels | |||||
A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-close vowels. The near-close vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: