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Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right
represents a rounded vowel.
The open back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɒ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Q. The symbol <ɒ> is called turned script a, because it is a rotated version of script a, so-called because it lacks the extra stroke on top of a printed 'a'. Turned script a, which has its linear stroke on the left, should not be confused with script a <ɑ>, which has its linear stroke on the right and corresponds to an unrounded version of this vowel, the open back unrounded vowel. A well rounded [ɒ] is rare, though it is found in some varieties of English. In most languages with this vowel, such as English and Persian, the rounding of [ɒ] is slight. However, Assamese has an "over-rounded" [ɒ̹] with rounding as strong as that for [u].
[edit] 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 back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.
[edit] Occurrence
