Near-close near-back rounded vowel - Definition and Overview

	front	near-front	central	near-back	back
Vowels

close	i • y		ɨ • ʉ		ɯ • u
near-close		ɪ • ʏ		ʊ
close-mid	e • ø		ɘ • ɵ		ɤ • o
mid			ə
open-mid	ɛ • œ		ɜ • ɞ		ʌ • ɔ
near-open	æ		ɐ
open	a • ɶ				ɑ • ɒ

Table of vowels
List of vowels

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Sound sample
IPA - Unicode ^{(See note 1)}	ʊ
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	`U`
Kirshenbaum	`U`

The near-close near-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 ʊ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is U. The IPA symbol is a small letter upsilon.

Features of this vowel:

Its vowel height is near-open, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted.
Its vowel backness is near-back, which means the tongue is positioned as in a back vowel, but slightly further forward in the mouth.
Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurs in:

English book /bʊk/
Persian [give example]
German "weak" /u/ phoneme

Notes

1. Prior to 1989, the IPA symbol was ɷ ("closed omega"); this symbol is now obsolete.

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