Open-mid back unrounded vowel

The open-mid back unrounded vowel or low-mid back unrounded vowel^[1] is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʌ⟩, graphically a rotated lowercase "v" (called a turned V but created as a small-capital ⟨ᴀ⟩ without the crossbar, even though some vendors display it as a real turned v). Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as a "wedge", "caret" or "hat". In transcriptions for English, this symbol is commonly used for the near-open central unrounded vowel and in transcriptions for Danish, it is used for the open back rounded vowel.

Open-mid back unrounded vowel
ʌ
IPA number	314
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʌ
Unicode (hex)	U+028C
X-SAMPA	V
Braille
Image

IPA: Vowels
Front Central Back Close i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u Near-close ɪ ʏ ʊ Close-mid e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o Mid e̞ ø̞ ə ɤ̞ o̞ Open-mid ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ Near-open æ ɐ Open a ɶ ä ɑ ɒ
IPA help  audio full chart template Legend: unrounded • rounded

Spectrogram of [ʌ]

Features

• Its vowel height is open-mid, also known as low-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel (a low vowel) and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Ajië[2]		kë	[kʌˀ]	'pot'	Distinct from /ə/
Catalan	Solsonès[3]	tarda	[ˈtaɾð̞ʌ̃ː]	'afternoon'	Realization of final unstressed /ə/
Danish		slot	[ˈslʌt]	'castle'	Usually transcribed as /ɒ/ but more mid-centralized [ɒ̽].
Emilian	most Emilian dialects[4]	Bulåggna	[buˈlʌɲːɐ]	'Bologna'	It corresponds to a sound between /ɔ/ to /ä/; written ò in some spellings
English	Cape Town[5]	lot	[lʌt]	'lot'	It corresponds to a weakly rounded [ɒ̈] in all other South African dialects. See South African English phonology
	Natal[5]
	Cardiff[6]	thought	[θʌːt]	'thought'	For some speakers it may be rounded and closer. See English phonology
	General South African[7]	no	[nʌː]	'no'	May be a diphthong [ʌʊ̯] instead.[8] See South African English phonology
	General American[9]	gut	[ɡʌt]ⓘ	'gut'	In some dialects, fronted to [ɜ], or fronted and lowered to [ɐ]. In Standard Southern British English, [ʌ] is increasingly heard in place of [ɐ] to avoid the trap-strut merger.[10] See English phonology and Northern Cities Vowel Shift
	Inland Northern American[11]
	Multicultural London[12]
	Newfoundland[13]
	Northern East Anglian[14]
	Philadelphia[15]
	Scottish[16]
	Some Estuary English speakers[17]
	Some Standard Southern British speakers[10]
French	Picardy[18]	alors	[aˈlʌʀ̥]	'so'	Corresponding to /ɔ/ in standard French.
German	Chemnitz dialect[19]	machen	[ˈmʌχɴ̩]	'to do'	Allophone of /ʌ, ʌː/ (which phonetically are central [ɜ, ɜː])[20] before and after /ŋ, kʰ, k, χ, ʁ/. Exact backness varies; it is most posterior before /χ, ʁ/.[21]
Haida[22]		ḵwaáay	[qʷʰʌʔáːj]	'the rock'	Allophone of /a/ (sometimes also /aː/) after uvular and epiglottal consonants.[23]
Irish	Ulster dialect[24]	ola	[ʌl̪ˠə]	'oil'	See Irish phonology
Kaingang[25]		[ˈɾʌ]		'mark'	Varies between back [ʌ] and central [ɜ].[26]
Kashmiri		از	[ʌz]	'today'	Allophone of [ɐ]. Used only in monosyllables. Typical of the Srinagar variety.
Kensiu[27]		[hʌʎ]		'stream'
Korean[28]		너 / neo	[nʌ̹]	'you'	See Korean phonology
Lillooet		[example needed]			Retracted counterpart of /ə/.
Mah Meri[29]		[example needed]			Allophone of /ə/; can be mid central [ə] or close-mid back [ɤ] instead.[29]
Nepali		असल/asal	[ʌsʌl]	'good'	See Nepali phonology
Norwegian	Solør[30]	fäss	[fʌs]	'waterfall'	In traditional dialect transcriptions, this vowel is written consequently as ⟨ä⟩, and has existed as a separate vowel in addition to ⟨æ⟩, [æ]. This is because ⟨ä⟩ has evolved from an unrounding of short ⟨o⟩. ⟨ä⟩ has morphed to [æ] with younger speakers.
Portuguese	Greater Lisbon area[31]	leite	[ˈɫ̪ʌjt̪ɨ̞]	'milk'	Allophone of /ɐ/ before /i/ (forming a phonetic diphthong [ʌj]). Corresponds to [e] in other accents.[31] See Portuguese phonology
Russian	Standard Saint Petersburg[32]	голова/golová	[ɡəɫ̪ʌˈvä]	'head'	Corresponds to [ɐ] in standard Moscow pronunciation;[32] occurs mostly immediately before stressed syllables. See Russian phonology
Scottish Gaelic	Barra[33]	duine	[ˈt̪ɯɲʌ]	'person'	Dialectal allophone of [ə] in word-final position.
Tamil[34]		[example needed]			Nasalized. Phonetic realization of the sequence /am/, may be [õ] or [ã] instead.[34] See Tamil phonology
Xavante[35]			[jʌm]	'seed'	The nasal version [ʌ̃] also occurs.[35]

Before World War II, the /ʌ/ of Received Pronunciation was phonetically close to a back vowel [ʌ], which has since shifted forward towards [ɐ] (a near-open central unrounded vowel). Daniel Jones reported his speech (southern British) as having an advanced back vowel [ʌ̟] between his central /ə/ and back /ɔ/; however, he also reported that other southern speakers had a lower and even more advanced vowel that approached cardinal [a].^[36] In American English varieties, such as in the West, the Midwest, and the urban South, the typical phonetic realization of the phoneme /ʌ/ is an open-mid central [ɜ].^[37][38] Truly backed variants of /ʌ/ that are phonetically [ʌ] can occur in Inland Northern American English, Newfoundland English, Philadelphia English, some of African-American English, and (old-fashioned) white Southern American English in coastal plain and Piedmont areas.^[39][40] However, the letter ⟨ʌ⟩ is still commonly used to indicate this phoneme, even in the more common varieties with central variants [ɐ] or [ɜ]. That may be because of both tradition and some other dialects retaining the older pronunciation.^[41]