The open-mid central unrounded vowel, or low-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 ⟨ɜ⟩. Note that the IPA symbol is not the digit ⟨3⟩, but a reversed epsilon. The value of this letter was only specified in 1993; before that, it was transcribed ⟨ɛ̈⟩.
The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low", and these are the only terms found in introductory textbooks on phonetics such as those by Peter Ladefoged.
Read more about Open-mid Central Unrounded Vowel: Features, Occurrence
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