Close-mid central unrounded vowel Close-mid central unrounded vowel The close-mid central unrounded vowel, or high-mid central 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 . This is a mirrored letter e, and should not be confused with the schwa , which is a turned e. It was added to the IPA in 1993; before that, this vowel was transcribed (Latin small letter e with umlaut, not Cyrillic small letter yo). Certain older sources transcribe this vowel . The letter may be used with a lowering diacritic ,
Open back rounded vowel on the right. A well-rounded is rare, but it is found in some varieties of English. In most languages with this vowel, such as English and Persian, the rounding of is slight, and in English at least, it is sulcal or "grooved". However, according to , Assamese has an "over-rounded" , with rounding as strong as that for . According to the phonetician Geoff Lindsey, may be an entirely superfluous IPA symbol, as the sound it represents is far too similar to the open-mid back rounded vowel , which makes it unlikely that any language would contrast these two vowels