Close-mid back unrounded vowel

Close-mid back unrounded vowel
ɤ
IPA number	315
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɤ
Unicode (hex)	U+0264
X-SAMPA	7
Kirshenbaum	o-
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Sound
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The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Acoustically it is a close-mid back-central unrounded vowel. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨ɤ⟩, called "ram's horns". It is distinct from the symbol for the voiced velar fricative, ⟨ɣ⟩, which has a descender.

The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low".

Before the 1989 IPA Convention, the symbol for the close-mid back unrounded vowel was ⟨⟩, sometimes called "baby gamma", which has a flat top. The symbol was revised to be ⟨⟩, "ram's horns", with a rounded top, in order to better differentiate it from the Latin gamma ⟨ɣ⟩. Unicode provides only U+0264 ɤ LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN (HTML ɤ), but in some fonts this character may appear as a "baby gamma" instead.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ɯ̽ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ •əɵ̞ •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ •ɐɞ̞ •aɶ •äɒ̈ •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 back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Note that unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Alekano		gamó	[ɣɑmɤʔ]	'cucumber'
Chinese	Mandarin	喝/hē	[xɤ˥]	'to drink'	See Standard Chinese phonology
	Taiwanese Hokkien	蚵/ô	[ɤ˧]	'oyster'	Mostly southern Taiwanese speech
English	Cape Flats dialect	foot	[fɤt]	'foot'	Possible realization of /ʊ/; may be [u] or [ʉ] instead.
	Indian South African				Possible realization of /ʊ/; may be a weakly rounded [ʊ] instead.
	Received Pronunciation	long ago	[lɒŋ ɤ̟ˈɡəʊ̯]	'long ago'	Near-back; allophone of /ə/ between velar consonants. See English phonology
	White South African	pill	[pʰɤ̟ɫ]	'pill'	Near-back; allophone of /ɪ/ before the velarised allophone of /l/. Also described as close [ɯ̟].
Irish	Ulster	Uladh	[ɤ̟l̪ˠu]	'Ulster'	Near-back. See Irish phonology
Kaingang		[ˈᵐbɤ]		'tail'	Varies between back [ɤ] and central [ɘ]
Korean	Gyeongsang dialect	거기/geogi	[ˈkɤ̘ɡɪ]	'there'	See Korean phonology
Northern Tiwa	Taos dialect	[ˌmã̀ˑˈpɤ̄u̯mã̄]		'it was squeezed'	May be central [ɘ] instead. See Taos phonology
Önge		önge	[ˈɤŋe]	'man'
Scottish Gaelic		doirbh	[d̪̊ɤrʲɤv]	'difficult'	See Scottish Gaelic phonology
Sundanese		ieu	[iɤ]	'this'
Thai		เธอ/thoe	[tʰɤ̟ː]	'you'	Near-back
Xumi	Upper	[Htsɤ]		'crown of a head'	Occasional realization of /o/.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

Bibliography

• Bowerman, Sean (2004), "White South African English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 931–942, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Chirkova, Katia; Chen, Yiya; Kocjančič Antolík, Tanja (2013), "Xumi, Part 2: Upper Xumi, the Variety of the Upper Reaches of the Shuiluo River" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (3): 381–396, doi:10.1017/S0025100313000169
• Finn, Peter (2004), "Cape Flats English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 934–984, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Gimson, Alfred Charles (2014), Cruttenden, Alan (ed.), Gimson's Pronunciation of English (8th ed.), Routledge, ISBN 9781444183092
• Jolkesky, Marcelo Pinho de Valhery (2009), "Fonologia e prosódia do Kaingáng falado em Cacique Doble", Anais do SETA, Campinas: Editora do IEL-UNICAMP, 3: 675–685
• Mesthrie, Rajend (2004), "Indian South African English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 953–963, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
• Ní Chasaide, Ailbhe (1999), "Irish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge University Press, pp. 111–16, ISBN 0-521-63751-1
• Tingsabadh, M. R. Kalaya; Abramson, Arthur S. (1993), "Thai", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 23 (1): 24–28, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004746
• Wells, John C. (1982), Accents of English 3: Beyond The British Isles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-28541-0