Claim: The open central unrounded vowel is used in approximately 23 different languages from around the world according to the International Phonetic Association.
Evidence: While the International Phonetic Alphabet officially has no dedicated letter for this sound between front a and back ɑ, it is normally written ⟨a⟩. If precision is required, it can be specified by using diacritics, typically centralized ⟨ä⟩. Burmese [mä] Chinese [tʰä˥ Czech [präx] Danish [ˈpɑ̈ːˀn] Dutch [zäːɫ] English [bɹɐ̞ː] [t̠ɹ̝̊äp̚] [t̠ɹ̝̊äʔp] French [pät̪] German [ˈkʰät͡sə] Hungarian [läːb] Italian [ˈkäːsä] Japanese [kä Limburgish [ˈzǎ̠ːk] Lithuanian [raːtɐs̪] Polish [kät̪ Portuguese [vä] Romanian [käl] Serbo-Croatian [pâ̠s̪] Spanish [ˈrät̪ä] Swedish [bäŋk] Thai [bǟːŋ.kɔ̀ːk̚ (help·) Turkish [ät̪] Welsh [ʃarad] Yoruba