Checked and free vowels

In phonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that commonly stand in a stressed closed syllable, while free vowels are those that can stand in either a stressed closed syllable or a stressed open syllable. The terms checked vowel and free vowel originated in English phonetics and phonology; they are seldom used for the description of other languages, even though a distinction between vowels that usually have to be followed by a consonant and other vowels is common in most Germanic languages. The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel respectively, but linguists often prefer to use the terms checked and free, as there is no clearcut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness and because by most attempted definitions of tenseness ɔː and ɑː are considered lax, even though they behave in American English as free vowels. Checked vowels is also used to refer to the kind of very short glottalized vowels heard in the Zapotecan languages of Oaxaca, Mexico, that contrast with laryngealized vowels. The term checked vowel is also used to refer to a short vowel followed by a glottal stop in Mixe, which has a distinction between two kinds of glottalized syllable nuclei: checked ones, with the glottal stop after a short vowel, and nuclei with rearticulated vowels, a long vowel with a glottal stop in the middle. In English, the checked vowels are the following: ɪ as in pit ɛ as in pet æ as in pat ɒ as in pot (in varieties without the cot-caught merger or the father–bother merger) ʊ as in put, foot ʌ as in putt, strut There are a few exceptions, mostly in interjections: eh and meh with ɛ; duh, huh, uh, uh-uh, and uh-huh with ʌ; nah with æ or ʌ; and yeah with ɛ (in accents that lack the diphthong /ɛə/) or æ. There are also the onomatopoeia baa for æ and the loanword pho for ʌ when pronounced in American English, as well as sometimes milieu and pot-au-feu. The proper names Graham and Flaherty are sometimes pronounced with a prevocalic æ.