Near-open central vowel

Near-open central vowel
ɐ
IPA Number	324
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɐ
Unicode (hex)	U+0250
X-SAMPA	6
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

The near-open central vowel, or near-low central 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 ⟨ɐ⟩, a rotated lowercase double-story a.

In English this vowel is most typically transcribed with the symbol ⟨ʌ⟩, i.e. as if it were open-mid back. That pronunciation is still found in some dialects, but many speakers use a central vowel like [ɐ] or [ɜ]. To avoid the trap-strut merger, Standard Southern British English is moving away from the [ɐ] quality towards [ʌ] found in RP spoken in the first half of the 20th century (e.g. in Daniel Jones's speech).^[2]

Much like ⟨ə⟩, ⟨ɐ⟩ is a versatile symbol that is not defined for roundedness^[3] and that can be used for vowels that are near-open central,^[4] near-open near-front,^[5] near-open near-back,^[6] open-mid central,^[7] open central^[8] or an (often unstressed) vowel with variable height, backness and/or roundedness that is produced in that general area.^[9] For open central unrounded vowels transcribed with ⟨ɐ⟩, see open central unrounded vowel.

When the usual transcription of the near-open near-front and the near-open near-back variants is different from ⟨ɐ⟩, they are listed in near-open front unrounded vowel and open back unrounded vowel or open back rounded vowel, respectively.

The near-open central unrounded vowel is sometimes the only open vowel in a language^[10] and then is typically transcribed with ⟨a⟩.