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 ,
Vowel breaking Vowel breaking In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of another sound or by stress, or it may be triggered in no particular way. Sometimes vowel breaking is defined as a subtype of diphthongization; then, it refers to harmonic (assimilatory) process that involves diphthongization triggered by a following vowel or consonant. The original pure vowel typically breaks into two segments, and the first segment matches the original vowel and the second segment is