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Concept
Open-mid back unrounded vowel
Summary
The open-mid back unrounded vowel or low-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʌ, graphically a rotated lowercase "v" (called a turned V but created as a small-capital without the crossbar), even though some vendors display it as a real turned v. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as a "wedge", "caret" or "hat". In transcriptions for English, this symbol is commonly used for the near-open central unrounded vowel and in transcriptions for Danish, it is used for the open back rounded vowel.
Before World War II, the /ʌ/ of Received Pronunciation was phonetically close to a back vowel [ʌ], which has since shifted forward towards ɐ (a near-open central unrounded vowel). Daniel Jones reported his speech (southern British) as having an advanced back vowel [ʌ̟] between his central /ə/ and back /ɔ/; however, he also reported that other southern speakers had a lower and even more advanced vowel that approached cardinal a. In American English varieties, such as in the West, the Midwest, and the urban South, the typical phonetic realization of the phoneme /ʌ/ is an open-mid central ɜ. Truly backed variants of /ʌ/ that are phonetically [ʌ] can occur in Inland Northern American English, Newfoundland English, Philadelphia English, some of African-American English, and (old-fashioned) white Southern American English in coastal plain and Piedmont areas. However, the letter ʌ is still commonly used to indicate this phoneme, even in the more common varieties with central variants ɐ or ɜ. That may be because of both tradition and some other dialects retaining the older pronunciation.
Official source
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