Close-mid central rounded vowel

Close-mid central rounded vowel
ɵ
IPA number323
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)ɵ
Unicode (hex)U+0275
X-SAMPA8
Braille

The close-mid central rounded vowel, or high-mid central rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɵ, a lowercase barred letter o. The value was specified only in 1993; until then, ɵ represented the mid central rounded vowel [ə̹].

The character ɵ has been used in several Latin-derived alphabets such as the one for Yañalif but then denotes a sound that is different from that of the IPA. The character is homographic with Cyrillic Ө. The Unicode code point is U+019F Ɵ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH MIDDLE TILDE.

This vowel occurs in Cantonese, Dutch, French, Russian and Swedish as well as in a number of English dialects as a realization of /ʊ/ (as in foot), /ɜː/ (as in nurse) or /oʊ/ (as in goat).

This sound rarely contrasts with the near-close front rounded vowel and so is sometimes transcribed with the symbol ʏ (the symbol for the near-close front rounded vowel).