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Close back unrounded vowel

Vowels
	front	near-front	central	near-back	back
close	i • y		ɨ • ʉ		ɯ • near-close		ɪ • close-mid	e • ø		ɘ • ɵ		ɤ • mid			ə
open-mid	ɛ • œ		ɜ • ɞ		ʌ • near-open	open	a • ɶ				ɑ • Table of vowels
List of vowels

The close back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɯ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is M.

IPA - Unicode	ɯ
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	M
Kirshenbaum	u-
Sound sample

Features of this vowel:

• Its vowel height is close, which means the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
• Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant
• Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.