Near-open 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-open vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a open vowel, but slightly more constricted. Near-open vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-open vowels. The near-open vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: