Near-close vowel
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See also: IPA, Consonants
| Front | Near- front | Central | Near- back | Back | |
| Close | |||||
| Near-close | |||||
| Close-mid | |||||
| Mid | |||||
| Open-mid | |||||
| Near-open | |||||
| Open | |||||
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents
a rounded vowel. Vowel length is indicated by appending ː.
a rounded vowel. Vowel length is indicated by appending ː.
A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-close vowels. The near-close vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

