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The open front 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is a.
This symbol is very frequently used for an open central unrounded vowel, and this usage is accepted by the International Phonetic Association. Since no language distinguishes front from central open vowels, a separate symbol is not considered necessary. If required, the difference may be specified with the central diacritic, .
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Features
Its vowel height is open, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth.
Its vowel backness is front which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. This subsumes central open vowels because the tongue does not have as much flexibility in positioning as it does for the close vowels; the difference between an open front vowel and an open back vowel is equal to the difference between a close front and a close mid vowel, or a close mid and a close back vowel.
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Occurs in
Most languages have some form of an unrounded open vowel. For languages that only have a single low vowel, the symbol for this vowel (a) is usually used because it is the only low vowel whose symbol is part of the basic Latin alphabet. However, in all of the following languages except Igbo, the is closer to a central ä than to a front a.
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In English language|English
In traditional RP this vowel occurs only in the same diphthongs as it does in GA. However many British English accents (especially in Northern England and Scotland) use it where RP usually uses , in words such as trap and bat. The symbol is now used for the vowel of British English trap and bat in dictionaries of the Oxford University Press, and the transcription is certainly more accurate than for most younger speakers' pronunciation, including those who could be deemed to speak RP.
It is used extensively in virtually all dialects of Irish English.
In many varieties of CaE, it occurs in words like bat as a result of the Canadian Shift.
This vowel occurs in the Boston accent, for example in star and father .
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In other languages
Dutch: zaal , hall (or a back vowel, depending on dialect and generation of speaker)
German: Ratte , "rat" (or a back vowel, depending on dialect)
Igbo: ákụ́ , kernel (a front vowel)
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Notes
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