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Open front 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 open front 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 a, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is a.

IPA - Unicode	a
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	a
Kirshenbaum	a
Sound sample

Features of this vowel:

• Its vowel height is open, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth.
• Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible 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.