| Near-open front unrounded vowel | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| æ | |||
| IPA Number | 325 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | æ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+00E6 | ||
| X-SAMPA | { | ||
| Braille |  | ||
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Legend: unrounded • rounded |
The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel,[1] is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨æ⟩, a lowercase of the ⟨Æ⟩ ligature. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash".
The rounded counterpart of [æ], the near-open front rounded vowel (for which the IPA provides no separate symbol) has been reported to occur allophonically in Danish;[2][3] see open front rounded vowel for more information.
In practice, ⟨æ⟩ is sometimes used to represent the open front unrounded vowel; see the introduction to that page for more information.
In IPA transcriptions of Hungarian and Valencian, this vowel is typically written with ⟨ɛ⟩.
- ^ While the International Phonetic Association prefers the terms "close" and "open" for vowel height, many linguists use "high" and "low".
- ^ Grønnum (1998:100)
- ^ Basbøll (2005:46)