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IPA – number 315
IPA – text ɤ
Entity ɤ
X-SAMPA 7
Kirshenbaum o-
Sound sample (help·info)

The close-mid back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ɤ, called "ram's horns". It is not to be confused with the symbol for the voiced velar fricative, ɣ, which has a descender.

Before 1989, the symbol for this sound was , sometimes called "baby gamma", which has a flat top. Now the symbol is , "ram's horns", with a rounded top. Unicode provides a space only for LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN (U+0264), but in some fonts this character may appear as a "baby gamma" instead.

Features

• Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
• Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Alekano gamó [ɣɑmɤʔ] 'cucumber'
Chinese Mandarin 喝/hē [xɤ˥] (help·info) 'to drink' See Standard Mandarin
Taiwanese 蚵/ô [ɤ˧] 'oyster' Mostly southern Taiwanese speech
Estonian kõrv [kɤrv] 'ear'
Irish Uladh [ɤlˠu] 'Ulster' See Irish phonology
Korean 어리다 [ɤɾida] 'young' See Korean phonology
Onge önge [ˈɤŋe] 'man'
Scottish Gaelic doirbh [d̪̊ɤrʲɤv] 'difficult'
Vietnamese tơ [tɤ̄] 'silk' See Vietnamese phonology

Mid back unrounded vowel

Some languages have a mid back unrounded vowel, distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and [ɤ] is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic may be used: [ɤ̞].

Several of the languages listed above may have mid rather than close-mid vowels.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, the lowering diacritic has been omitted for the sake of simplicity

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Bulgarian път [pɤt] 'path' Somewhat fronted