Back Ongeronde naby-oop-voorklinker Afrikaans Ungerundeter fast offener Vorderzungenvokal ALS صائت أمامي شبه مفتوح غير مدور Arabic Ненапрегнато-отворена предна незакръглена гласна Bulgarian Vogalenn beuzdigor a-raok plaen Breton Vocal quasioberta anterior no arrodonida Catalan Téměř otevřená přední nezaokrouhlená samohláska Czech Ungerundeter fast offener Vorderzungenvokal German Vocal casi abierta anterior no redondeada Spanish Lavea lähes väljä etuvokaali Finnish
| Near-open front unrounded vowel | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| æ | |||
| IPA Number | 325 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | æ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+00E6 | ||
| X-SAMPA | { | ||
| Braille |  | ||
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| IPA: Vowels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Legend: unrounded • rounded |
The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel,[1] is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨æ⟩, a lowercase of the ⟨Æ⟩ ligature. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash".
The rounded counterpart of [æ], the near-open front rounded vowel (for which the IPA provides no separate symbol) has been reported to occur allophonically in Danish;[2][3] see open front rounded vowel for more information.
In practice, ⟨æ⟩ is sometimes used to represent the open front unrounded vowel; see the introduction to that page for more information.
In IPA transcriptions of Hungarian and Valencian, this vowel is typically written with ⟨ɛ⟩.
- ^ While the International Phonetic Association prefers the terms "close" and "open" for vowel height, many linguists use "high" and "low".
- ^ Grønnum (1998:100)
- ^ Basbøll (2005:46)