An open-mid vowel (also mid-open vowel, low-mid vowel, mid-low vowel or half-open vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately one third of the way from an open vowel to a close vowel.
Examples
Some of the open-mid vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
- open-mid front unrounded vowel
- open-mid front rounded vowel
- open-mid central unrounded vowel (older publications may use )
- open-mid central rounded vowel (older publications may use )
- open-mid back unrounded vowel
- open-mid back rounded vowel
Other open-mid vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels.