Front vowel

Front vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherwise make it a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as sounding brighter than the back vowels.
Near-front vowels are essentially a type of front vowel; no language is known to contrast front and near-front vowels based on backness alone.
Rounded front vowels are typically centralized, that is, near-front in their articulation. This is one reason they are written to the right of unrounded front vowels in the IPA vowel chart.
Partial list
The front vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
close front unrounded vowel
close front compressed vowel
near-close front unrounded vowel
near-close front compressed vowel
close-mid front unrounded vowel
close-mid front compressed vowel
open-mid front unrounded vowel
open-mid front compressed vowel
near-open front unrounded vowel
open front unrounded vowel
open front rounded vowel
There also are front vowels without dedicated symbols in the IPA:
close front protruded vowel
near-close front protruded vowel
close-mid front protruded vowel
mid front unrounded vowel or
mid front compressed vowel or
mid front protruded vowel or
open-mid front protruded vowel
As above, other front vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels, such as , or for a near-close front unrounded vowel.
Articulatorily fronted vowels
In articulation, fronted vowels, where the tongue moves forward from its resting position, contrast with raised vowels and retracted vowels. In this conception, fronted vowels are a broader category than those listed in the IPA chart, including and, marginally, mid-central vowels. Within the fronted vowels, vowel height (open or close) is determined by the position of the jaw, not by the tongue directly. Phonemic raised and retracted vowels may be phonetically fronted by certain consonants, such as palatals and in some languages pharyngeals. For example, may be fronted to next to or .
Effect on preceding consonant
In the history of many languages, for example French and Japanese, front vowels have altered preceding velar or alveolar consonants, bringing their place of articulation towards palatal or postalveolar. This change can be allophonic variation, or it can have become phonemic.
This historical palatalization is reflected in the orthographies of several European languages, including the and of almost all Romance languages, the and in Norwegian, Swedish, Faroese and Icelandic, and the , and in Greek. English follows the French pattern, but without as much regularity.
However, for native or early borrowed words affected by palatalization, English has generally altered the spelling after the pronunciation (Examples include cheap, church, cheese, churn from , and yell, yarn, yearn, yeast from .)
See also
Central vowel
Back vowel
List of phonetics topics
Relative articulation
References
Vowels by backness
Phonology