Open-mid back unrounded vowel
The open-mid back unrounded vowel, or low-mid back 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, graphically a rotated lowercase "v". Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as either a wedge, a caret, or a hat. In transcriptions for English, this symbol is commonly used for the near-open central unrounded vowel, and in transcriptions for Danish, it is used for the open back rounded vowel.Features
Occurrence
Before World War II, the of Received Pronunciation was phonetically close to a back vowel ; this sound has since shifted forward towards . Daniel Jones reports his speech, as having an advanced back vowel between his central and back ; however, he also reports that other southern speakers had a lower and even more advanced vowel approaching cardinal. In American English varieties, e.g. the West and Midwest, and the urban South, the typical phonetic realization of the phoneme is an open-mid central. Truly backed variants of that are phonetically can occur in Inland Northern American English, Newfoundland English, Philadelphia English, some African-American Englishes, and white Southern English in coastal plain and Piedmont areas. Despite this, the letter is still commonly used to indicate this phoneme, even in the more common varieties with central variants or. This may be due to both tradition as well as the fact that some other dialects retain the older pronunciation.
