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 ,
Stress and vowel reduction in English schwa. For example, the word "noted" is transcribed . The final vowel of words like "happy and "coffee is a reduced front close unrounded vowel most commonly represented with , although some dialects (including more traditional Received Pronunciation) may have . This used to be identified with the phoneme , as in . See "happy" tensing. However, some contemporary accounts regard it as a symbol representing a close front vowel that is neither the vowel of nor that of ; it occurs in contexts where the contrast between these vowels is neutralized; these contexts include unstressed prevocalic position within the