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
Braille
Sound
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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 prefer the terms "high" and "low".

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 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. Note that rounded front vowels are often centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-front.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Afrikaans	Standard	meter	[ˈmëˑtɐr]	'meter'	Near-front. Allophone of /eə/ in less stressed words and in stressed syllables of polysyllabic words. In the latter case, it is in free variation with the diphthongal realization [ëə̯ ~ ë̯ə ~ ëə]. See Afrikaans phonology
Arabic	Egyptian	ليه	[leː]	'why'	See Egyptian Arabic phonology
	Gulf	ليش	[leːʃ]		See Arabic phonology
	Levantine
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic		heː	[heː]	'yes'	Prominent in the Urmia, Nochiya and Jilu dialects. Can be closer to [i] for some speakers. Lowered to [e̞] in other varieties.
Bavarian	Amstetten dialect
Catalan		séc	[s̠ek]	'fold'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Cantonese	鼻/bei6	[pei˨˨]	'nose'	See Cantonese phonology
	Mandarin	飛/fēi	[feɪ̯˥]	'to fly'	See Standard Chinese phonology
	Wu	隑/ge	[ɡe˩˧]	'lean'
Czech	Bohemian	byli	[ˈbele]	'they were'	Also described as near-close near-front [ɪ]; corresponds to close front [i] in Moravian Czech. See Czech phonology
	Brno accent	led	[let]	'ice'	Corresponds to [ɛ ~ ɛ̠ ~ ɛ̝̈] in standard Czech. See Czech phonology
Danish	Standard	hæl	[ˈheːˀl]	'heel'	Also described as open-mid ⟨ɛ⟩ - the way it is most often transcribed. It is mid [e̞] in the conservative variety. 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
	General Indian	play	[pl̥e(ː)]	'play'
	General Pakistani				Can be a diphthong [eɪ] instead, depending on speaker.
	Multicultural London
	Scottish
	Singaporean
	Tyneside
	Ulster				Pronounced [ɛː~iə] in Belfast.
	Cardiff	kit	[ke̠t]	'kit'	Near-front; corresponds to /ɪ/ in other dialects.
Faroese		eg	[eː]	'I'
French		beauté	[bot̪e]	'beauty'	See French phonology
Galician		tres	[t̪ɾes]	'three'
Georgian		მეფჱ	[mɛpʰej]	'king'
German	Standard	Seele	[ˈzeːlə]	'soul'	See German phonology
Hindustani		दे / دے	[d̪eː]	'give!'	See Hindustani phonology
Icelandic		vinur	[ˈveːnөr]	'friend'	Most often transcribed /ɪ/. See Icelandic phonology
Italian		stelle	[ˈs̪t̪elle]	'stars'	See Italian phonology
Kaingang		[ˈkɾe]		'thigh'
Korean		베다/beda	[ˈpeːda]	'to cut'	See Korean phonology
Limburgish	Most dialects	leef	[leːf]	'dear'	The example word is from the Maastrichtian dialect.
	Rural Weerts	beek	[beːk]	'stream'	Corresponds to /iə/ in the city dialect. The vowel transcribed /eː/ in the city dialect is actually a centering diphthong /eə/.
Luxembourgish		drécken	[ˈdʀekən]	'to push'	Allophone of /e/ before velar consonants; in free variation with [ɛ]. See Luxembourgish phonology
Malay		bebek	[bebeʔ]	'duck'	See Malay phonology
North Frisian		ween	[ʋeːn]	'blue'
Norwegian	Standard Eastern	le	[l̪eː]	'laugh'	Often diphthongized to [eə̯]. See Norwegian phonology
Polish		dzień	[ˈd͡ʑeɲ̟]	'day'	Allophone of /ɛ/ between palatal or palatalized consonants. See Polish phonology
Portuguese		mesa	[ˈmezɐ]	'table'	See Portuguese phonology
Punjabi		ਸੇਬ	[seːb]	'apple'
Romanian	Muntenian dialects	vezi	[vezi]	'eyelash'	Corresponds to mid [e̞] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian		шея	[ˈʂejə]	'neck'	Occurs only before soft consonants. See Russian phonology
Shiwiar					Allophone of /a/.
Slovak	Dialects spoken near the river Ipeľ	dcéra	[ˈt͡seːrä]	'daughter'	In standard Slovak, the backness varies between front and near-front; most commonly, it is realized as mid [e̞ː] instead. See Slovak phonology
	Standard
Swedish		se	[s̪eː]	'see'	See Swedish phonology
Vietnamese		tê	[te]	'numb'	See Vietnamese phonology
West Frisian		ik	[ek]	'I'	Also described as mid [e̞]; typically transcribed in IPA as ⟨ɪ⟩. See West Frisian phonology
Yoruba
Zapotec	Tilquiapan		—	—	Occurs mostly after [i], otherwise the vowel is central [ɘ].

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

Bibliography

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