Vowels
Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels /iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/ with the short vowels /e/, /o/, /æ/ respectively. /e/ is pronounced between the vowel of bate (for most English dialects) and the vowel of bet; /o/ is pronounced the vowel of boat (for most English dialects) and the vowel of raw.
Word-final /o/ is rare except for /to/ ('you' ), loanwords, and proper and common nouns of foreign origin, and word-final /æ/ is very rare in Iranian Persian, except for /næ/ ('no'). The word-final /æ/ in Early New Persian mostly shifted to /e/ in contemporary Iranian Persian (often romanized as "eh", meaning is also an allophone of /æ/ in word-final position in contemporary Iranian Persian), but is preserved in the Eastern dialects.
The chart to the right reflects the vowels of many educated Persian speakers from Tehran.
Read more about this topic: Persian Phonology
Famous quotes containing the word vowels:
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