Near-open front unrounded vowel

Near-open front unrounded vowel
æ
IPA Number325
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)æ
Unicode (hex)U+00E6
X-SAMPA{
Braille⠩ (braille pattern dots-146)
Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox IPA with unknown parameter "kirshenbaum"
Sagittal section of a vocal tract pronouncing the IPA sound ⟨æ⟩. Note that a wavy glottis in this diagram indicates a voiced sound.

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⟩.

  1. ^ While the International Phonetic Association prefers the terms "close" and "open" for vowel height, many linguists use "high" and "low".
  2. ^ Grønnum (1998:100)
  3. ^ Basbøll (2005:46)