The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound that occurs in most spoken languages, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol . It is similar to the vowel sound in the English word meet—and often called long-e in American English. Although in English this sound has additional length (usually being represented as ) and is not normally pronounced as a pure vowel (it is a slight diphthong), some dialects have been reported to pronounce the phoneme as a pure sound. A pure sound is also heard in many other languages, such as French, in words like chic.
The close front unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the palatal approximant . They alternate with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages, with the non-syllabic diacritic and are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound.
Languages that use the Latin script commonly use the letter to represent this sound, though there are some exceptions: in English orthography that letter is usually associated with (as in bit) or (as in bite), and is more commonly represented by , , , or , as in the words scene, bean, meet, niece, conceive; (see Great Vowel Shift). Irish orthography reflects both etymology and whether preceding consonants are broad or slender, so such combinations as , , and all represent .
Features
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Afrikaans 'thief' See Afrikaans phonology Arabic Standard / 'religion' See Arabic phonologyBengali'day'See Bengali phonology Catalan 'sic' See Catalan phonology Chinese Mandarin / 'seven' See Standard Chinese phonology Chuvash 'thread' Czech 'white' See Czech phonology Dutch 'beet' See Dutch phonology English Most dialects free 'free' Depending on dialect, can be pronounced as . See English phonology Australian bit 'bit' Also described as near-close front . See Australian English phonology French 'finished' See French phonology German 'goal' See Standard German phonology Greek Modern Standard / 'garden' See Modern Greek phonology Hebrew Modern Standard 'thinking' See Modern Hebrew phonology Hindustani Hindi ज़िंदगी(zindagi) 'life' See Hindustani phonology. Urdu زندگی(zindagi) Hungarian 'arch' See Hungarian phonology Italian 'bile' See Italian phonology Japanese / 'silver' See Japanese phonology Khmer / 'doctrine' See Khmer phonology Korean / 'child' See Korean phonology Kurdish Kurmanji (Northern) 'milk' See Kurdish phonology Sorani (Central) / Palewani (Southern) Lithuanian 'man' See Lithuanian orthography Malay Malaysian Malay 'to follow' See Malay phonology Malayalam 'leaf' See Malayalam phonology Mpade 'monkey' Polish 'teddy bear' See Polish phonology Portuguese 'oneself' Also occurs as an unstressed allophone of other vowels. May be represented by . See Portuguese phonology Romanian 'island' See Romanian phonology Rungus 'to come' Russian / 'leaf' Only occurs word-initially or after palatalized consonants. See Russian phonology Serbo-Croatian / 'hayfork' See Serbo-Croatian phonology Spanish 'type' May also be represented by . See Spanish phonology Sotho 'to call' Contrasts close, near-close and close-mid front unrounded vowels. See Sotho phonology Swedish Central Standard 'become' Often realized as a sequence or (hear the word: ); it may also be fricated or, in some regions, fricated and centralized (). See Swedish phonology Tagalog 'bird' Thai / 'dagger' Turkish 'rope' See Turkish phonology Ukrainian / 'city, town' See Ukrainian phonology Welsh 'I went' See Welsh phonology Yoruba 'spoon'
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