Open back rounded vowel


The open back rounded vowel, or low back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is. It is called "turned script a", being a rotated version of "script a", which is the variant of a that lacks the extra stroke on top of a "printed a".
Turned script a has its linear stroke on the left, whereas "script a" has its linear stroke on the right.
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 phonemically. He also writes that the contemporary Standard Southern British accent lacks, having replaced it with the more common , and advocates for transcribing this vowel with the symbol in SSB.
This is not to be understood as having the same quality as , as the latter is close-mid, not open-mid. Lindsey also says that more open variants of used formerly in SSB are satisfyingly represented by the symbols and in narrow phonetic transcription, and in phonemic/broad phonetic transcription. According to him, the endless repetition of the symbol in publications on BrE has given this vowel a familiarity out of all proportion to its scarcity in the world’s languages.

Features

Occurrence