Close-mid vowel

A close-mid vowel (also mid-close vowel, high-mid vowel, mid-high vowel or half-close vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one third of the way from a close vowel to an open vowel.

Partial list
The close-mid vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:


 * close-mid front unrounded vowel
 * close-mid front rounded vowel
 * close-mid central unrounded vowel (older publications may use ⟨ë⟩)
 * close-mid central rounded vowel (older publications may use ⟨ö⟩)
 * close-mid back unrounded vowel
 * close-mid back rounded vowel

Other close-mid vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels.