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Roundedness

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	Topics Roundedness Topic Home In phoneticsPhonetics Phonetics is the study of sounds and the human voice.... , vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lipFacts About Lip Lips are a visible organ at the mouth of humans and many animals.... s during the articulation of a vowelVowel Overview In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so tha... . That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowelFront vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages.... s tend to be unrounded, while back vowelBack vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages.... s tend to be rounded. But some languages, such as FrenchFrench language French is the third-largest of the Romance languages in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish and Portuguese, b... and GermanGerman language German is a West Germanic language.... , distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same heightVowel height In phonetics and phonology, vowel height is a feature that shows the vertical position of the tongue relative to the roof of... , while VietnameseVietnamese language Overview Vietnamese , formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietn... distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. When consonants are rounded, they are called labialized. In the International Phonetic AlphabetFacts About International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists.... vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that occur on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, respectively , to indicate greater or lesser degrees of rounding. The 'more' and 'less rounded' diacritics are sometimes also used with consonants to indicate degrees of labialization. (See relative articulationRelative articulation In phonetics and phonology, the manner and place of articulation of a speech sound may be specified relative to some point o... .) Types of rounding There are two types of vowel rounding: endolabial, or compressed, and exolabial, or protruded. In endolabial rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn slightly together and the lips may be compressed horizontally, but the lips do not protrude and only their outer surface is exposed. In exolabial rounding, the lips protrude like a tube, as when kissKiss A kiss is the touching of the lips to some other thing, usually another person.... ing; the inner surface of the lips is exposed. Usually, back rounded vowels are exolabial, while front rounded vowels are endolabial. However, in JapaneseJapanese language Japanese is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around... , the back high vowel is endolabial. Swedish is unusual in that dialects of it make a phonemicPhoneme In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones that are cognitively equivalent.... distinction between the two types, having unrounded, endolabial, and exolabial front close-mid vowelClose-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages.... s. Some varieties of Dutch make the same distinction. There is no dedicated IPA diacritic to represent this contrast, and without disambiguation both the word "rounded" and the symbols for the rounded vowels are understood to refer to exolabial rounding. The northern Iroquoian languagesIroquoian languages Overview The Iroquoian languages are a Native American language family.... have no labial consonantLabial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth .... s. They do have , , and , but these do not involve noticeable rounding (protrusion) of the lips. It may be that they are purely velarVelar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue... , but it is also possible that they are compressed. See also List of phonetics topicsList of phonetics topics Sorry, no overview for this topic Close front compressed vowelClose front compressed vowel The close front or near-close near-front compressed vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages.... Close central compressed vowelClose central compressed vowel The close central compressed vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages.... Close back compressed vowelClose back compressed vowel The close back compressed vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages....