Near-close near-front unrounded vowel

Near-close near-front unrounded vowel
ɪ
IPA number	319
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɪ
Unicode (hex)	U+026A
X-SAMPA	I
Kirshenbaum	I
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Near-close front unrounded vowel
ɪ̟

The near-close near-front unrounded vowel, or near-high near-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 ⟨ɪ⟩, i.e. a small capital letter i.

The IPA prefers the terms "close" and "open" for classifying vowels. Some linguists use the terms "high" and "low," respectively, instead of "close" and "open."

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ɯ̽ʊ •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 near-close, also known as near-high, which means the tongue is not quite so constricted as a close vowel (high vowel).
• Its vowel backness is near-front. also known as front-central or centralized front, which means the tongue is positioned almost as far forward as a front vowel.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, a fully front vowel is represented by the "advanced" diacritic [ɪ̟].

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic		sitwa	[sɪtwɐ]	'winter'	Used mostly in the Tyari dialects. [ə] is used predominantly in other dialects.
Chinese	Yue	冰 bing1	[pɪŋ˥]	'ice'	See Cantonese phonology
	Wu	一 ih	[iɪʔ˥]	'one'
Czech		byli	[ˈbɪlɪ]	'they were'	See Czech phonology
Danish	Standard	hel	[ˈhɪ̟ːˀl]	'whole'	Fully front; often transcribed /e/. See Danish phonology
Dutch	Rotterdam	bit	[bɪ̟t]	'bit'	Somewhat fronted; corresponds to [ɘ̟] in standard Dutch. See Dutch phonology
	The Hague
English	Most dialects	bit	[bɪt]	'bit'	See English phonology
	Australian		[bɪ̟t]		Fully front and somewhat raised, tenser than in most other dialects. See Australian English phonology
	New Zealand	bed	[bɪd]	'bed'	Some speakers. For others it's more open [e], or even [ɛ], in case of South African English.
	South African
French	Quebec	petite	[pət͡sɪt]	'small'	Allophone of /i/ in closed syllables. See Quebec French phonology
German	Standard	bitte	[ˈbɪtʰə]	'please'	May be somewhat lowered. See German phonology
Hindustani		दिन/دن	[d̪ɪn]	'day'	See Hindustani phonology
Irish		duine	[dˠɪnʲə]	'person'	See Irish phonology
Lithuanian		viltis	[vʲɪlʲˈtʲɪs]	'hope'
Luxembourgish		Been	[bɪ̟ːn]	'leg'	Fully front. May be transcribed /eː/.
Mongolian		?	[xɪɾɘ̆]	'hillside'
Plautdietsch		winta	[ˈvɪntə]	'winter'
Portuguese	Brazilian	Filipe	[fɪˈɫipɪ]	'Filipe'	Unstressed vowel ⟨e⟩ in some dialects. Corresponds to [i ~ e̞] in Brazil and /ɨ/ in other national variants. See Portuguese phonology
Punjabi		ਨਿੰਬੂ	[nɪmbu]	'lemon'
Norwegian		litt	[lɪt]	'a little'	May be fully front. See Norwegian phonology
Russian		дерево	[ˈdʲerʲɪvə]	'tree'	Occurs only in unstressed syllables. See Russian phonology
Scottish Gaelic		thig	[hɪk]	'come'	See Scottish Gaelic phonology
Sicilian		arrìriri	[aˈrɪɾiɾi]	'smile'
Spanish	Eastern Andalusian	mis	[mɪ̟ː]	'my' (pl.)	Fully front. It corresponds to [i] in other dialects, but in these dialects they're distinct. See Spanish phonology
	Murcian
Swedish	Central Standard	sill	[s̪ɪ̟l̪]	'herring'	Fully front and lowered, more like [e̝]. See Swedish phonology
Ukrainian		ходити	[xoˈdɪtɪ]	'to walk'	See Ukrainian phonology
Vietnamese		chị	[cɪj˧ˀ˨]	'elder sister'	See Vietnamese phonology
West Frisian	Standard	lippe	[ˈɫɪ̽pə]	'lip'	Backed and slightly lowered, more like [ɘ̟].
	Hindelopers	beast	[bɪːst]	'animal'

Bibliography

• Barbosa, Plínio A.; Albano, Eleonora C. (2004), Brazilian Portuguese, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 227–232, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001756 
• Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003), The Phonetics of English and Dutch, Fifth Revised Edition, ISBN 9004103406 
• Engstrand, Olle (1999), "Swedish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 140, ISBN 0-521-63751-1 
• Gilles, Peter; Trouvain, Jürgen (2013), Luxembourgish, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 43 (1): 67–74, doi:10.1017/S0025100312000278 
• Grønnum, Nina (1998), Danish, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28 (1 & 2): 99–105, doi:10.1017/s0025100300006290 
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), Dutch, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45–47, doi:10.1017/S002510030000459X 
• Iivonen, Antti; Harnud, Huhe (2005), Acoustical comparison of the monophthong systems in Finnish, Mongolian and Udmurt, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 59–71, doi:10.1017/S002510030500191X 
• Jones, Daniel; Ward, Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press 
• Kohler, Klaus J. (1999), "German", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 86–89, ISBN 0-521-65236-7 
• Mangold, Max (2005), Das Aussprachewörterbuch, Duden, p. 37, ISBN 9783411040667 
• Verhoeven, Jo (2005), Belgian Standard Dutch, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2): 245, doi:10.1017/S0025100305002173 
• Zamora Vicente, Alonso (1967), Dialectología española (2nd ed.), Biblioteca Romanica Hispanica, Editorial Gredos