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 ,
Close-mid back rounded vowel to have protrusion, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some of the following may actually have compression." There is no dedicated diacritic for compression in the IPA. However, compression of the lips can be shown with as (simultaneous and labial compression) or ( modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic may also be used with a rounded vowel letter as an "ad hoc" symbol, but 'spread' technically means unrounded. Only Shanghainese is known to contrast it with the more typical "protruded" (endolabial) close-mid back vowel, but the height of both vowels varies from close to close-mid. Close-mid back rounded vowel