Near-close near-back unrounded vowel
The near-close near-back unrounded vowel, or near-high near-back unrounded vowel, is a type of a vowel sound, used in a few spoken languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has no dedicated symbol for this sound, but it may be represented as or . It may also be transcribed as, but because is defined by the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association as rounded, the symbol can also signify a weakly rounded, rather than the fully unrounded vowel that is described in this article. In his Accents of English, John C. Wells transcribes this vowel with the para-IPA symbol, though Sinological phonetic notation uses this symbol for a different vowel, which is the near-open back rounded vowel.
For precision, the near-close back unrounded vowel, or near-high back unrounded vowel, may also be described, and is attested in a few spoken languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet can represent this sound as or as . However, some phoneticians argue that all lip position inverses of the primary cardinal vowels are centralized based on formant acoustics, so that there may be no substantial difference between a near-close near-back unrounded vowel and its fully back counterpart.