Open-mid central unrounded vowel

Open-mid central unrounded vowel
ɜ
ɛ̈
ə̞
ɐ̝
IPA number	326
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɜ
Unicode (hex)	U+025C
X-SAMPA	3
Kirshenbaum	V"
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The open-mid central unrounded vowel, or low-mid central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɜ⟩. The IPA symbol is not the digit ⟨3⟩ or the Cyrillic small letter Ze (з). The symbol is instead a reversed Latinized variant of the lowercase epsilon, ɛ. The value was specified only in 1993; until then, it had been transcribed ⟨ɛ̈⟩.

The ⟨ɜ⟩ letter may be used with a raising diacritic ⟨ɜ̝⟩, to denote the mid central unrounded vowel. It may also be used with a lowering diacritic ⟨ɜ̞⟩, to denote the near-open central unrounded vowel.

IPA: Vowels [edit]
Front Central Back Close Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u ɪ ʏ ɨ̞ ʉ̞ ɯ̞ ʊ e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o e̞ ø̞ ə ɵ̞ ɤ̞ o̞ ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ œ̞ ɐ ʌ̞ ɔ̞ a ɶ ä ɒ̈ ɑ ɒ
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded