Close-mid front unrounded vowel

Close-mid front unrounded vowel
e
IPA number	302
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	e
Unicode (hex)	U+0065
X-SAMPA	e
Kirshenbaum	e
Sound

The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨e⟩.

The IPA prefers the terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of this article follows this preference. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low", and these are the only terms found in introductory textbooks on phonetics such as those by Peter Ladefoged.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ ə •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ æ ɐ •aɶ ä •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
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• Its vowel height is close-mid, also known as high-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel (a high vowel) and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Arabic	Egyptian	ليه	[leː]	'why'	See Egyptian Arabic phonology
	Levantine	ليش	[leːʃ]		See Arabic phonology
Catalan		séc	[ˈsek]	'fold'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Cantonese	鼻 bei6	[pei˨˨]	'nose'	See Cantonese phonology
	Mandarin	飛 fēi	[feɪ̯˥]	'to fly'	See Mandarin phonology
	Wu	隑 ge	[ɡe˩˧]	'lean'
Danish	Standard	hæl	[ˈheːˀl]	'heel'	Often transcribed /ɛ/. See Danish phonology
Dutch	Belgian	vreemd	[vreːmt]	'strange'	In the Netherlands often diphthongized to [eɪ]. See Dutch phonology
	Northeastern
	Standard Netherlandic
English	Australian	bed	[bed]	'bed'	See Australian English phonology
	New Zealand				Can be closer to [ɪ] for some speakers.
	South African				Can also be lower [ɛ], or higher [e̝~ɪ̞], depending on the dialect.
	North American	play	[pl̥e(ː)]	'play'	Some dialects. Many speakers have a diphthong of the type [eɪ] instead.
	Irish				Can be a diphthong [eɪ] instead, depending on the dialect.
	General Indian
	Scottish
	Singaporean
	Tyneside
	Ulster				Pronounced [ɛː~iə] in Belfast.
	Cardiff	kit	[kët]	'kit'	Centralized; corresponds to /ɪ/ in other dialects.
Faroese		eg	[eː]	'I'
French		beauté	[bote]	'beauty'	See French phonology
Galician		tres	[tres]	'three'
Georgian		მეფჱ	[mɛpʰej]	'king'
German	Standard	Seele	[ˈzeːlə]	'soul'	See German phonology
Italian		stelle	[ˈstelle]	'stars'	See Italian phonology
Korean		베다 beda	[ˈpeːda]	'to cut'	See Korean phonology
Malay		bebek	[bebek]	'duck'	See Malay phonology
North Frisian		ween	[ʋeːn]	'blue'
Norwegian		le	[leː]	'laugh'	See Norwegian phonology
Polish		dzień	[ˈd͡ʑeɲ]	'day'	Allophone of /ɛ/ between palatal or palatalized consonants. See Polish phonology
Portuguese		mesa	[ˈmezɐ]	'table'	See Portuguese phonology
Russian		шея	[ˈʂejə]	'neck'	Occurs only before soft consonants. See Russian phonology
Swedish		se	[seː]	'see'	See Swedish phonology
Vietnamese		tê	[te]	'numb'	See Vietnamese phonology
West Frisian		skeel	[ˈskeːɫ]	'cross-eyed'
Zapotec	Tilquiapan		—	—	Occurs mostly after [i], otherwise the vowel is central [ɘ].

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

Bibliography

• Carbonell, Joan F.; Llisterri, Joaquim (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1–2): 53–56, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004618 
• Coupland, Nikolas (1990), English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict, and Change, p. 93, ISBN 1-85359-032-0 
• Deterding, David (2000), "Measurements of the /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ vowels of young English speakers in Singapore", in Brown, Adam; Deterding, David; Low, Ee Ling, The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics, pp. 93–99 
• Harrington, Jonathan; Cox, Felicity; Evans, Zoe (1997), "An acoustic phonetic study of broad, general, and cultivated Australian English vowels", Australian Journal of Linguistics 17 (2): 155–184, doi:10.1080/07268609708599550 
• Scobbie, James M; Gordeeva, Olga B.; Matthews, Benjamin (2006), Acquisition of Scottish English Phonology: an overview, Edinburgh: QMU Speech Science Research Centre Working Papers 
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223 
• Fougeron, Cecile; Smith, Caroline L (1993), "French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73–76, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004874 
• Grønnum, Nina (1998), "Danish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28 (1 & 2): 99–105 
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191 
• Jones, Daniel; Ward, Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press 
• Mangold, Max (2005), Das Aussprachewörterbuch, Duden, ISBN 9783411040667 
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquiapan Zapotec", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38 (1): 107–114, doi:10.1017/S0025100308003344 
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628 
• Shosted, Ryan K.; Chikovani, Vakhtang (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255–264, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002659 
• Verhoeven, Jo (2005), "Belgian Standard Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2): 243–247, doi:10.1017/S0025100305002173 
• Watt, Dominic; Allen, William (2003), "Tyneside English", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 267–271, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001397 
• Wells, J. C. (1982), Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-28541-0