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 ,
Near-open central vowel is the most common type of the near-open central vowel, and is thus typically transcribed simply as , which is the convention used in this article. If its unroundedness needs to be specified, it can be done by adding the less rounded diacritic to the near-open central vowel symbol: , by combining the lowered diacritic with the open-mid central unrounded vowel symbol: , by combining the centralized diacritic with the near-open front unrounded vowel symbol: , or by combining the mid-centralized diacritic with either the open front unrounded vowel symbol: , or with the open back unrounded vowel: . The