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In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a rounded vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, and back vowels tend
near-open central unrounded vowel: German besser, Catalan mare: 3: ɜ: open-mid central unrounded vowel: English bird: a: a~ä: open front unrounded vowel/ open central unrounded vowel: Spanish barra, French bateau, German Haar, Italian pazzo} ʉ: close central rounded vowel: Scottish English pool, Swedish sju: 8: ɵ: close-mid central rounded ...
An example is Spanish, which distinguishes two palatal approximants: an approximant semivowel [j], which is always unrounded (and is a phonological vowel - an allophone of /i/), and an approximant consonant unspecified for rounding, [ʝ̞] (which is a phonological consonant).
Some languages, though, have a palatal approximant that is unspecified for rounding, and therefore cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either [y] or its unrounded counterpart . An example of such a language is Spanish, in which the labialized palatal approximant (not a semivowel) appears allophonically with rounded vowels in ...
In other words, all vowels but schwas. Examples of tense and lax vowels are [i], [o] and [ɪ], [ɔ], respectively. Another characteristic of vowels is rounding. For example, for [u], the lips are rounded, but for [i], the lips are spread. Vowels can be categorized as rounded or unrounded.
For many of the languages that have only one phonemic front unrounded vowel in the mid-vowel area (neither close nor open), the vowel is pronounced as a true mid vowel and is phonetically distinct from either a close-mid or open-mid vowel. Examples are Basque, Spanish, Romanian, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Greek, Hejazi Arabic, Serbo-Croatian ...
Eastern Arrernte has labialization at all places and manners of articulation; this derives historically from adjacent rounded vowels, as is also the case of the Northwest Caucasian languages. Marshallese also has phonemic labialization as a secondary articulation at all places of articulation except for labial consonants and coronal obstruents .
The spread-lip diacritic ͍ may also be used with a rounded vowel letter o͍ as an ad hoc symbol, but 'spread' technically means unrounded. Only Wu Chinese is known to contrast it with the more typical protruded (endolabial) close-mid back vowel, but the height of both vowels varies from close to close-mid. [6]