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A vowel diagram or vowel chart is a schematic arrangement of the vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
s. Depending on the particular language being discussed, it can take the form of a triangle
Triangle

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or wikt:vertex and three sides or edges which are line segments....
 or a quadrilateral
Quadrilateral

In geometry, a quadrilateral is a polygon with four 'sides' or edges and four vertices or corners. Sometimes, the term quadrangle is used, for analogy with triangle, and sometimes tetragon for consistency with pentagon , hexagon and so on....
. Vertical position on the diagram denotes the vowel closeness, with close vowels at the top of the diagram, and horizontal position denotes the vowel backness, with front vowels at the left of the diagram.

The vowel systems of most languages can be represented by such a chart.






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A vowel diagram or vowel chart is a schematic arrangement of the vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
s. Depending on the particular language being discussed, it can take the form of a triangle
Triangle

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or wikt:vertex and three sides or edges which are line segments....
 or a quadrilateral
Quadrilateral

In geometry, a quadrilateral is a polygon with four 'sides' or edges and four vertices or corners. Sometimes, the term quadrangle is used, for analogy with triangle, and sometimes tetragon for consistency with pentagon , hexagon and so on....
. Vertical position on the diagram denotes the vowel closeness, with close vowels at the top of the diagram, and horizontal position denotes the vowel backness, with front vowels at the left of the diagram.

The vowel systems of most languages can be represented by such a chart. Usually they are evenly distributed on the chart, a phenomenon that is known as vowel dispersion. For most languages, the vowel system is triangular. Only 10% of languages, including the English language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, have a vowel diagram that is quadrilateral. Such diagrams are termed vowel trapeziums or vowel quadrilaterals. German phonologists know these as, respectively, a Vokalviereck and a Vokaltrapez.

The IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
 vowel chart comprises the cardinal vowel
Cardinal vowel

Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. For instance, the vowel of the English language word "feet" can be described with reference to cardinal vowel 1, , which is the cardinal vowel closest to it....
s, and has the form of a trapezium
Trapezium

The word trapezium has several meanings:* - a trapezoid .* - a quadrilateral with no parallel sides * Trapezium , a bone in the wrist* Trapezium , a group of stars in the Orion Nebula...
. By definition, no real vowel sound can be plotted outside of the IPA trapezium, because its four corners represent the extreme points of articulation
Articulatory phonetics

The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians attempt to document how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures....
. The vowel diagrams of most real languages are not so extreme. In English, for example, high vowels are not as high as the corners of the IPA trapezium, nor are front vowels as front.

See also