The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is , called "ram's horn." This symbol is distinct from the symbol for the voiced velar fricative , which has a descender, but some textsSuch as and . still use a ram's horn for the voiced velar fricative.

Before the 1989 IPA Convention, the symbol for the close-mid back unrounded vowel was , sometimes called "baby gamma", which has a flat top; this symbol was in turn derived from and replaced the inverted small capital A , that represented the sound before the 1928 revision to the IPA. The symbol was again revised to be , "ram's horn", with a rounded top, in order to better differentiate it from the Latin gamma .

Unicode provides , but in some fonts this character may appear as a "baby gamma" instead. The superscript IPA version is . As of Unicode , there exists a capital ram's horn at .

Features

Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Aklanon 'thanks' Bashkir / 'nine'Biak'stand'Bulgarian/'elderflower' Chinese Mandarin / 'hungry' English Cape Flats foot 'foot' Possible realization of ; may be or instead. See South African English phonology South African Possible realization of ; may be a weakly rounded instead. See South African English phonology Geordie Usual realization of . See Geordie phonology Birmingham and The Black Country Corresponds to in most other dialects. Estonian 'ear' Can be close-mid central or close back instead, depending on the speaker. See Estonian phonology Gayo 'tiger' Close-mid or mid; one of the possible allophones of .Iaai 'banana leaf' Irish Ulster 'Ulster' See Irish phonology Kaingang 'tail' Varies between back and central Korean Gyeongsang dialect / 'there' See Korean phonologyMarathi/'opinion'See Marathi phonology Northern Tiwa Taos dialect 'it was squeezed' May be central instead. See Taos phonologySamogitian 'long' May be central instead. Scottish Gaelic 'difficult' See Scottish Gaelic phonology Sundanese Priangan / 'pretty'RusynLemko variety/'times'Used only in place of etymological praslavic sound *yPrešov varietySubcarpathian variety Thai /thơ̄ 'you' Tuvan /yt 'dog'Yaqay 'frog' Uncommon pronunciation of .

See also Index of phonetics articles

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