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Near-close 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

A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-close vowels. The near-close vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

• near-close near-front unrounded vowel [ɪ]
• near-close near-front rounded vowel [ʏ]
• near-close near-back rounded vowel [ʊ]