Close-mid back unrounded vowel

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Vowels

v • d • e

See also: IPA, Consonants

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ · ʏ ɪ̈ · ʊ̈ ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents
a rounded vowel. Vowel length is indicated by appending  ː

IPA – number	315
IPA – text	ɤ
IPA – image
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 distinct from 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'
Thai		เธอ	[tʰɤː]	'you/she'
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

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