Talk:Close back unrounded vowel

Sound File
I cannot play the soundfile ... it is not working.Bao Pu (talk) 15:49, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It should work. Make sure you have the ability to listen to .ogg files on your computer.  — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  01:48, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese yes or no?
A sound in Portuguese links here from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_Portuguese_and_Galician but Portuguese is not mentioned and the section linked to is no longer there. I see in the article history there was a tussle over whether to include it. Whether or not there are currently a lot of broken links, this is not good enough. 82.2.125.203 (talk) 18:46, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

More recognisable examples?
I wish these articles would give more recognisable examples of sounds like this. It surely doesn't help the average English reader to be told ɯː is found in Estonian, or Azeri, or Garifuna (whatever that is), since hardly anyone will be familiar with these languages. I've wondered for years what the Estonian vowel 'õ' sounds like, but all I find is linguists' jargon, or else lamentations from expats in Tallinn that they'll never manage to learn the sound, or gleeful comments by native Estonians that the sound is terribly difficult (it isn't) and that foreigners can never get their tongues round it.... Telling us this is a 'close, back, unrounded value' may be phonetically accurate, but is mumbo-jumbo to most readers, since hardly anyone knows what these descriptions are being compared with. It might help, for instance, to explain that this sound comes close to 'œu' in the French words 'cœur' or 'bœuf' - it isn't quite the same, but close enough, and these are words many English readers do know from names like 'Sacré Cœur' and 'bœuf bourguignon'.213.127.210.95 (talk) 14:50, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * is essentially an ordinary French/Spanish/Italian (as in e.g. Spanish nunca) said with unrounded lips. French  sounds nothing like it, and you definitely should not use it as a substitute for Estonian 'õ' nor Turkish 'ı', as both of those languages also have a mid front rounded vowel that sounds practically the same as French . Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

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Portuguese unstressed E is what?
I was listening to this, I can tell you as a Portuguese person that the unstressed e is not sounding this closer to the u sound. If someone would use this sound instead of the real one it would sound like an ‘okay’ effort but it would still sound foreign or strange.

I can say that the real unstressed e sound is something in between ɨ and ʉ (closer to the first one if said less aggressively and closer to the second if you say it marking the sound a lot.

I took the time to upload the audio of how it sounds.



Tuggaboy (talk) 21:44, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The close back unrounded vowel isn't "the u sound", and the recording is supposed to sound like the cardinal vowel, not the Portuguese one (whether it does or doesn't is another question). Your recording is pretty close to what we have in the article. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 21:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I meant to say that the cardinal vowel sounds closer to a ‘ü’ sound than to the Portuguese sound for the unstressed E in Standard Portuguese, despite being pointed out in this very same article as the most appropriate IPA character to be used. As a native speaker it sounds totally different (as this and these in English would sound different), it is more central than that. I never meant to say that the  sounded like . Kind regards Tuggaboy (talk) 00:27, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It really doesn't. It's very far away from it. This is an unrounded back vowel, the ‘ü’ sound (meaning the close front rounded vowel) is a front vowel and it's rounded. The Portuguese vowel you're talking about is between and  and it's not rounded. Plus, this article isn't about a cardinal vowel but vowels that occur in natural languages that are close to, and the Portuguese vowel is, IMO (and according to Madalena Cruz-Ferreira) very close to that. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 06:47, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
 * On second thought, perhaps Cruz-Ferreira slightly misplaced the vowel and it should be closer to, rather than being a vowel in-between and . To me at least, it sounds like , perhaps slightly retracted (or retracted and raised). It's quite similar to Polish $⟨y⟩$, which is an advanced and raised , a vowel in-between  and  but closer to the latter. In fact, a few years ago I was told that Polish $⟨y⟩$ and Portuguese $⟨e⟩$ in pegar are basically the same vowel. I agree with that, but not completely - there's a difference in backness. Our vowel is advanced central (between  on the official IPA chart [for the lack of a better name], but closest to ), yours is more back (between  on the official IPA chart, but IMO closest to ).
 * That would explain the usual transcription of the Portuguese vowel as ⟨ɨ⟩. It's probably more central than back, as I've already said. It seems to me that it's just the central counterpart of, just as is the central counterpart of.
 * On page 23 of The Principles of IPA (1949), the authors state that Portuguese (which they transcribe with ⟨ə⟩) is generally close-mid central, except when before, where it's more front. They also say that  is close in quality to Southern English . Close-mid central unrounded vowel is probably the best place for this vowel, AFAICS. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 10:09, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Note on Azerbaijani
For the Azerbaijani entry, this article currently says that /ɯ/ would be closer to an [ɘ]. A note is provided (Mokari & Werner 2016, p. 514), but the link does not lead anywhere (since there is no reference). I searched for it based on the names & year and found the following PDF, which seems to be the source:. In fact, the document's contents on p. 514 are about this vowel, but there is no explicit mention of it being close to [ɘ], and I cannot find any other statement that would suggest so (at least not to an untrained reader). Since there seems to be some truth to it (also reflected in the article Azerbaijani language), I won't change it, but perhaps someone more knowledgeable can Thanks. --Bfx0 (talk) 13:42, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) fix the reference
 * 2) provide an explanation for why the statement follows from the source, or provide a better source, or remove the source (if it doesn't support the claim)
 * 3) remove the statement (if it's wrong)

Is it not used in Chinese Mandarin?
The example 刺 / cì [t͡sʰɯ˥˩]was not covered in https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%96%89%E5%BE%8C%E4%B8%8D%E5%9C%93%E5%94%87%E5%85%83%E9%9F%B3

In my understanding this should be [t͡sʰɹ̩˥˩] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Syllabic_consonants Tianrenli92 (talk) 05:56, 2 June 2023 (UTC)