Back vowel

A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding darker than the front vowels.

Near-back vowels are essentially a type of back vowels; no language is known to contrast back and near-back vowels based on backness alone.

The category "back vowel" comprises both raised vowels and retracted vowels.

Articulation
In their articulation, back vowels do not form a single category, but may be either raised vowels such as or retracted vowels such as.

Partial list
The back vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:


 * close back unrounded vowel
 * close back protruded vowel
 * near-close back protruded vowel
 * close-mid back unrounded vowel
 * close-mid back protruded vowel
 * open-mid back unrounded vowel
 * open-mid back rounded vowel
 * open back unrounded vowel
 * open back rounded vowel

There also are back vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA:


 * close back compressed vowel or
 * near-close back unrounded vowel or
 * near-close back compressed vowel or
 * close-mid back compressed vowel or
 * mid back unrounded vowel or
 * mid back rounded vowel or

As here, other back vowels can be transcribed with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels, such as ⟨u̞⟩, ⟨o̝⟩ or ⟨ʊ̠⟩ for a near-close back rounded vowel.