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I am trying to pronounce this [e] sound accurately, but with my Canadian English dialect, I always seem to end up gliding it. I am trying to hold my tongue and jaw as still as possible when pronouncing it, but a glide always seems to make it into my pronunciation. Is there a technique I need to know to keep my mouth very still so as to pronounce [e] accurately? Denelson 83 00:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
It makes no sense. How can English have both close-mid and mid in the same words? Someone needs to fix it and considering I'd never heard about the mid front unrounded vowel before reading this page, I don't feel like the prime candidate for it. AEuSoes1 19:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
"led" | "laid"* | |
---|---|---|
Closer than close-mid | NZE | |
Close-mid | AusE | RP, CanE |
Mid | RP | GAmE |
Open-mid | GAmE |
the vowel in “let” is:
So according to this source, a lowered /e/ and a raised /ɛ/ are not the same thing except in older style RP. We can also see in this Korean phonology vowel chart
![]() |
![]() |
But this same source explains that [e] and [ɛ] are cardinal vowels and that they don’t necessarily correspond to the real vowels of any natural language (p 126). My point is that it seems that having an /e/ or /ɛ/ that happens to be in the middle between the two is less significant than the article makes it out to be. I notice that for the example of
NZE the diacritic is simply put in there without making a subsection on near-near close front unrounded vowels. I don’t think we need to take out mention of the mid-central vowel, but… well I’ll change the article to something closer to what I think it should be. If it turns out to be crap it can always be reverted and if it turns out great then I can extend it to the other vowel articles that mention the mid-vowel
AEuSoes1
21:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
(moving discussion back from my talk page - kwami)
[...] there is no objective criterion as to what constitutes a separate vowel cross-linguistically. This is merely an issue of how we wish to present the subject. For me and at least one other editor, it makes sense to separate mid, close-mid, and open-mid vowels (all arbitrary categories) rather than conflating two of them. This is simply a case of aligning our description with the terminology used in the literature: since the IPA classification categorizes open, near-open, open-mid, mid, close-mid, near-close, and close vowels, we feel that our articles should cover the subjects of open, near-open, open-mid, mid, close-mid, near-close, and close vowels. kwami 21:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
As for me objecting that other articles make the distinction, my only point was that they should be consistant, not that they somehow proved my POV. Either mid and close-mid should be conflated in all articles or they should be distinct in all articles.
I disagree that IPA talk of "mid" is 'either close-mid, open-mid or both'. Sometimes it's just mid. The basic point is that the IPA has a label "mid". People will expect "mid vowels" to be mid vowels, and separating them out is a way of clarifying when they are and when they aren't. I don't follow what you mean by "linguists" not agreeing on a "mid" vowel distinction - any linguist will tell you that vowel height is a continuum phonetically, though structural phonologists may debate how many heights there are in a featural system. It's true that the IPA has set up cardinal vowel positions, but this is just to define the grid. Over a third of IPA vowel symbols don't occupy cardinal positions.
Per SOWL, Danish for example is a language which contrasts close-mid and mid vowels. However, it doesn't have open-mid vowels, so they're transcribed /e ε/. That means that the /ε/ in Danish is similar, and perhaps closer, than the /e/ in Croatian, which is mid or on the open side of mid.
Amstetten Bavarian is a language which distinguishes close-mid, mid, and open-mid vowels, or something very close to them. However, the symbols for the near-open and open vowels are available for the open-mids (/æ ɶ ɑ/ are a third of the way between /a/ and /i u/, which makes them cardinal open-mids!), which means that the open-mid symbols can now be used for the mid vowels. So when we do get a language which contrasts the three mid vowel heights, that's hidden by using symbols for other heights to represent them. (Actually, /ε œ ɔ/ may be closer to close-mid, with /e ø o/ even higher, but you get my point.)
We can certainly make it clearer that the IPA does not enshrine mid vowels with dedicated symbols. And if the phrase "mid vowel" weren't so commonly used, I'd have no trouble lumping them together as you'd like. However, symbols are commonly used in whatever way is convenient for setting up phonemic contrasts, without paying much attention to how they actually sound. For example, I just came across a representation of voiceless [j] as /ç/. Presumably that's because it's hard to add an under-ring to <j>, but we'd certainly want to make it clear in this case that /ç/ is not a fricative. Given that <e ø o> are commonly used for mid or open-mid vowels, and that they may be called mid vowels even when they're close-mid, I think we'll prevent a lot of confusion by separating out the examples of true mid vowels. Again, if people didn't refer to 'mid vowels', there'd be no need to do this. kwami 01:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
AEuSoes1 03:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
The hungarian example of "hét" seems wrong. Its pronounciation is closer to /ɪ/; it certainly is a very different vowel from the other examples given, and it's definitely not a 'front vowel'.
Does anyone have any sources for this? Cameron Nedland 14:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Since we decided a year ago to split the close central and near-close central vowels, thus deviating from the official IPA vowel chart layout, I propose that we do the same for the mid vowels. Right now, the mid vowels are in the close-mid vowel articles as subsections and I say we ought to split them so that we'll have, for example, Close-mid front unrounded vowel, Mid front unrounded vowel, and Open-mid front unrounded vowel. This proposal goes for any of the close-mid vowel articles and, as such, I've marked them. We may also want to apply this to our article on Mid central vowel, splitting it into Mid central unrounded vowel and Mid central rounded vowel. Thoughts? — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm no expert on phonology, I'm simply a native speaker of Polish who has never heard anything close to the sound on the recording in his life. The example given in the table is "dzień" /dʑeɲ/ - I've checked it in my Polish-English dictionary, which happens to have pronunciation written for both English and Polish words, and it is /d͡ʒɛɲ/ in it. Polish Wiktionary gives /ʥ̑ɛ̇̃ɲ/, English one /ʥɛɲ/ - all of them agree with me there is /ɛ/ instead of /e/. So I think that either this example is completely wrong or it is at least misspelt. Lampak ( talk) 10:48, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Shosted and Chikovani 2006 does not provide a transcription of Georgian მეფე or any other Georgian word with this vowel. The IPA transcription is accurate, though, so it would be nice if the actual citation could be provided! Zupancic ( talk) 11:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I believe the sound given this symbol (e:) is INCORRECT. It is identical to the sound for the letter immediately above (that sounds like "ee" in "hee hee.") The evidence that the sound assigned is erroneous is the example German word "Klee" followed by the note 'sounds like e in "hey"' ('Klee' sounds like the English word "Clay", which is not an open-E sound at all.) -- ecsd @ Berkeley:CA:US 18:34 UTC 9 July 2013
The example (шея) seems wrong. It is clearly /ɛ/ not e. Look at the example for /ɛ/ : Это. These two words are pronounced EXACTLY the same. -- 207.250.96.103 20:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't and no native-born Australian I know or have ever met or heard pronounces the e in bed as /e/. It rhymes with red or dead, which is /ɛ/. What this article is trying to say is that Australians pronounce bed to rhyme with bade. Which again, nobody I've ever heard does. Show an example of a native-born Australian (you know, one without a foreign accent) pronounce it this way. And even if you can, they'd be in a tiny, unheard-of minority. If you like, I can record myself pronouncing it, and it sounds nothing like the recorded example we have for the vowel sound - which to me sounds like a diphthong anyway. Peter Greenwell ( talk) 01:35, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
It seems that German and English speakers pronounce [e] very differently. Relatively in English [e] is closer to [æ], in German [e] is closer to [i].
Golopotw ( talk) 05:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
It is somewhere between this and [ɛ]. — 81.173.227.144 ( talk) 18:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
@ Kbb2: Can you explain the situation? So the sound file only seems to show up when ipa symbol=e is there, so should we not have a sound file there or is there a more proper way to display it? I have been looking around and seeing missing sound files from several IPA articles, and I haven't found why exactly this is other than the lack of this line seemingly causing it. Compare how Schwa does have ipa symbol=ə which causes the sound file to display (for me). — Knyȝt ( talk) 21:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
|ipa symbol=
is now prerequisite in Infobox IPA. Will add them where they are not present.
Nardog (
talk)
23:18, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
The specific vowel /e̞/ is so widespread and is such a staple in basic 3-5 vowel systems around the world that it’s crazy that /e̞/ doesn’t have its own article. Surely it deserves it especially since /ø̞/ has its own article. TheNewLetters ( talk) 20:16, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
It sounds like two sounds are being pronounced: it starts at [e] but ends at [i]. Was very confusing when comparing [e] to [ɛ] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:F598:B40A:490:308A:7A99:CDC1:F021 ( talk) 15:24, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
May we get a sound example that is not drawn out creeky-voice guy? (besides, he is pronouncing it higher/closer than cardinal ⟨e⟩, moving closer the realm of [i]) Bladesinger46n2 ( talk) 06:31, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
As a previous comment pointed out, the audio file sounds clearly diphthongised to my ears, so I decided to check it out in Praat and indeed there is a slight drop in F1 frequency about where it sounds like the second part of the diphthong begins. Stockhausenfan ( talk) 22:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
I live on the east coast and I don't think I've ever heard an American pronounce may as [meː]. It does say "Most often a closing diphthong [eɪ]." But still maybe it shouldn't be included as an example. Zbutie3.14 ( talk) 01:34, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
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I am trying to pronounce this [e] sound accurately, but with my Canadian English dialect, I always seem to end up gliding it. I am trying to hold my tongue and jaw as still as possible when pronouncing it, but a glide always seems to make it into my pronunciation. Is there a technique I need to know to keep my mouth very still so as to pronounce [e] accurately? Denelson 83 00:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
It makes no sense. How can English have both close-mid and mid in the same words? Someone needs to fix it and considering I'd never heard about the mid front unrounded vowel before reading this page, I don't feel like the prime candidate for it. AEuSoes1 19:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
"led" | "laid"* | |
---|---|---|
Closer than close-mid | NZE | |
Close-mid | AusE | RP, CanE |
Mid | RP | GAmE |
Open-mid | GAmE |
the vowel in “let” is:
So according to this source, a lowered /e/ and a raised /ɛ/ are not the same thing except in older style RP. We can also see in this Korean phonology vowel chart
![]() |
![]() |
But this same source explains that [e] and [ɛ] are cardinal vowels and that they don’t necessarily correspond to the real vowels of any natural language (p 126). My point is that it seems that having an /e/ or /ɛ/ that happens to be in the middle between the two is less significant than the article makes it out to be. I notice that for the example of
NZE the diacritic is simply put in there without making a subsection on near-near close front unrounded vowels. I don’t think we need to take out mention of the mid-central vowel, but… well I’ll change the article to something closer to what I think it should be. If it turns out to be crap it can always be reverted and if it turns out great then I can extend it to the other vowel articles that mention the mid-vowel
AEuSoes1
21:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
(moving discussion back from my talk page - kwami)
[...] there is no objective criterion as to what constitutes a separate vowel cross-linguistically. This is merely an issue of how we wish to present the subject. For me and at least one other editor, it makes sense to separate mid, close-mid, and open-mid vowels (all arbitrary categories) rather than conflating two of them. This is simply a case of aligning our description with the terminology used in the literature: since the IPA classification categorizes open, near-open, open-mid, mid, close-mid, near-close, and close vowels, we feel that our articles should cover the subjects of open, near-open, open-mid, mid, close-mid, near-close, and close vowels. kwami 21:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
As for me objecting that other articles make the distinction, my only point was that they should be consistant, not that they somehow proved my POV. Either mid and close-mid should be conflated in all articles or they should be distinct in all articles.
I disagree that IPA talk of "mid" is 'either close-mid, open-mid or both'. Sometimes it's just mid. The basic point is that the IPA has a label "mid". People will expect "mid vowels" to be mid vowels, and separating them out is a way of clarifying when they are and when they aren't. I don't follow what you mean by "linguists" not agreeing on a "mid" vowel distinction - any linguist will tell you that vowel height is a continuum phonetically, though structural phonologists may debate how many heights there are in a featural system. It's true that the IPA has set up cardinal vowel positions, but this is just to define the grid. Over a third of IPA vowel symbols don't occupy cardinal positions.
Per SOWL, Danish for example is a language which contrasts close-mid and mid vowels. However, it doesn't have open-mid vowels, so they're transcribed /e ε/. That means that the /ε/ in Danish is similar, and perhaps closer, than the /e/ in Croatian, which is mid or on the open side of mid.
Amstetten Bavarian is a language which distinguishes close-mid, mid, and open-mid vowels, or something very close to them. However, the symbols for the near-open and open vowels are available for the open-mids (/æ ɶ ɑ/ are a third of the way between /a/ and /i u/, which makes them cardinal open-mids!), which means that the open-mid symbols can now be used for the mid vowels. So when we do get a language which contrasts the three mid vowel heights, that's hidden by using symbols for other heights to represent them. (Actually, /ε œ ɔ/ may be closer to close-mid, with /e ø o/ even higher, but you get my point.)
We can certainly make it clearer that the IPA does not enshrine mid vowels with dedicated symbols. And if the phrase "mid vowel" weren't so commonly used, I'd have no trouble lumping them together as you'd like. However, symbols are commonly used in whatever way is convenient for setting up phonemic contrasts, without paying much attention to how they actually sound. For example, I just came across a representation of voiceless [j] as /ç/. Presumably that's because it's hard to add an under-ring to <j>, but we'd certainly want to make it clear in this case that /ç/ is not a fricative. Given that <e ø o> are commonly used for mid or open-mid vowels, and that they may be called mid vowels even when they're close-mid, I think we'll prevent a lot of confusion by separating out the examples of true mid vowels. Again, if people didn't refer to 'mid vowels', there'd be no need to do this. kwami 01:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
AEuSoes1 03:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
The hungarian example of "hét" seems wrong. Its pronounciation is closer to /ɪ/; it certainly is a very different vowel from the other examples given, and it's definitely not a 'front vowel'.
Does anyone have any sources for this? Cameron Nedland 14:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Since we decided a year ago to split the close central and near-close central vowels, thus deviating from the official IPA vowel chart layout, I propose that we do the same for the mid vowels. Right now, the mid vowels are in the close-mid vowel articles as subsections and I say we ought to split them so that we'll have, for example, Close-mid front unrounded vowel, Mid front unrounded vowel, and Open-mid front unrounded vowel. This proposal goes for any of the close-mid vowel articles and, as such, I've marked them. We may also want to apply this to our article on Mid central vowel, splitting it into Mid central unrounded vowel and Mid central rounded vowel. Thoughts? — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm no expert on phonology, I'm simply a native speaker of Polish who has never heard anything close to the sound on the recording in his life. The example given in the table is "dzień" /dʑeɲ/ - I've checked it in my Polish-English dictionary, which happens to have pronunciation written for both English and Polish words, and it is /d͡ʒɛɲ/ in it. Polish Wiktionary gives /ʥ̑ɛ̇̃ɲ/, English one /ʥɛɲ/ - all of them agree with me there is /ɛ/ instead of /e/. So I think that either this example is completely wrong or it is at least misspelt. Lampak ( talk) 10:48, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Shosted and Chikovani 2006 does not provide a transcription of Georgian მეფე or any other Georgian word with this vowel. The IPA transcription is accurate, though, so it would be nice if the actual citation could be provided! Zupancic ( talk) 11:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I believe the sound given this symbol (e:) is INCORRECT. It is identical to the sound for the letter immediately above (that sounds like "ee" in "hee hee.") The evidence that the sound assigned is erroneous is the example German word "Klee" followed by the note 'sounds like e in "hey"' ('Klee' sounds like the English word "Clay", which is not an open-E sound at all.) -- ecsd @ Berkeley:CA:US 18:34 UTC 9 July 2013
The example (шея) seems wrong. It is clearly /ɛ/ not e. Look at the example for /ɛ/ : Это. These two words are pronounced EXACTLY the same. -- 207.250.96.103 20:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't and no native-born Australian I know or have ever met or heard pronounces the e in bed as /e/. It rhymes with red or dead, which is /ɛ/. What this article is trying to say is that Australians pronounce bed to rhyme with bade. Which again, nobody I've ever heard does. Show an example of a native-born Australian (you know, one without a foreign accent) pronounce it this way. And even if you can, they'd be in a tiny, unheard-of minority. If you like, I can record myself pronouncing it, and it sounds nothing like the recorded example we have for the vowel sound - which to me sounds like a diphthong anyway. Peter Greenwell ( talk) 01:35, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
It seems that German and English speakers pronounce [e] very differently. Relatively in English [e] is closer to [æ], in German [e] is closer to [i].
Golopotw ( talk) 05:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
It is somewhere between this and [ɛ]. — 81.173.227.144 ( talk) 18:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
@ Kbb2: Can you explain the situation? So the sound file only seems to show up when ipa symbol=e is there, so should we not have a sound file there or is there a more proper way to display it? I have been looking around and seeing missing sound files from several IPA articles, and I haven't found why exactly this is other than the lack of this line seemingly causing it. Compare how Schwa does have ipa symbol=ə which causes the sound file to display (for me). — Knyȝt ( talk) 21:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
|ipa symbol=
is now prerequisite in Infobox IPA. Will add them where they are not present.
Nardog (
talk)
23:18, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
The specific vowel /e̞/ is so widespread and is such a staple in basic 3-5 vowel systems around the world that it’s crazy that /e̞/ doesn’t have its own article. Surely it deserves it especially since /ø̞/ has its own article. TheNewLetters ( talk) 20:16, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
It sounds like two sounds are being pronounced: it starts at [e] but ends at [i]. Was very confusing when comparing [e] to [ɛ] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:F598:B40A:490:308A:7A99:CDC1:F021 ( talk) 15:24, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
May we get a sound example that is not drawn out creeky-voice guy? (besides, he is pronouncing it higher/closer than cardinal ⟨e⟩, moving closer the realm of [i]) Bladesinger46n2 ( talk) 06:31, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
As a previous comment pointed out, the audio file sounds clearly diphthongised to my ears, so I decided to check it out in Praat and indeed there is a slight drop in F1 frequency about where it sounds like the second part of the diphthong begins. Stockhausenfan ( talk) 22:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
I live on the east coast and I don't think I've ever heard an American pronounce may as [meː]. It does say "Most often a closing diphthong [eɪ]." But still maybe it shouldn't be included as an example. Zbutie3.14 ( talk) 01:34, 13 July 2024 (UTC)