Close-mid back unrounded vowel

For the Cyrillic letter that looks similar, see Uk (Cyrillic).

The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel,^[1] is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨ɤ⟩, called "ram's horn." This symbol is distinct from the symbol for the voiced velar fricative, ⟨ɣ⟩, which has a descender, but some texts^[2] use this symbol for the voiced velar fricative.

Close-mid back unrounded vowel
ɤ
IPA number	315
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɤ
Unicode (hex)	U+0264
X-SAMPA	7
Braille
Image

IPA: Vowels
Front Central Back Close i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u Near-close ɪ ʏ ʊ Close-mid e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o Mid e̞ ø̞ ə ɤ̞ o̞ Open-mid ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ Near-open æ ɐ Open a ɶ ä ɑ ɒ
IPA help  audio full chart template Legend: unrounded • rounded

Spectrogram of [ɤ]

Before the 1989 IPA Convention, the symbol for the close-mid back unrounded vowel was ⟨⟩, sometimes called "baby gamma", which has a flat top; this symbol was in turn derived from and replaced the inverted small capital A, ⟨ᴀ⟩, that represented the sound before the 1928 revision to the IPA.^[3] The symbol was ultimately revised to be ⟨⟩, "ram's horn", with a rounded top, in order to better differentiate it from the Latin gamma ⟨ɣ⟩.^[4]

Unicode provides U+0264 ɤ LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN, but in some fonts this character may appear as a "baby gamma" instead. The superscript IPA version is U+10791 𐞑 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL RAMS HORN.^[5] As of Unicode 16.0, there exists a capital ram's horn at U+A7CB Ɤ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER RAMS HORN ⟨⟩.

Features

• Its vowel height is close-mid, also known as high-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel (a high vowel) and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back.
• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Aklanon		saeamat	[saɤamat]	'thanks'
Bashkir		туғыҙ/tuğïð	[tuˈʁɤð]ⓘ	'nine'
Biak[6]		ores	[ɤres]	'stand'
Bulgarian		бъз	[bɤz]	'elderflower'
Chinese	Mandarin	餓/è	[ɤ˥˩]	'hungry'
English	Cape Flats[7]	foot	[fɤt]	'foot'	Possible realization of /ʊ/; may be [u] or [ʉ] instead.[7] See South African English phonology
	South African[8]				Possible realization of /ʊ/; may be a weakly rounded [ʊ] instead.[8] See South African English phonology
	Geordie				Usual realization of /ʊ/. See Geordie phonology
	Birmingham and The Black Country				Corresponds to /ʊ/ in most other dialects.[9]
Estonian[10]		kõrv	[kɤrv]	'ear'	Can be close-mid central [ɘ] or close back [ɯ] instead, depending on the speaker.[10] See Estonian phonology
Gayo[11]		kule	[kuˈlɤː]	'tiger'	Close-mid or mid; one of the possible allophones of /ə/.[11]
Iaai[12]		löö	[lɤː]	'banana leaf'
Irish	Ulster[13]	Uladh	[ɤl̪ˠu]	'Ulster'	See Irish phonology
Kaingang[14]		mo	[ˈᵐbɤ]	'tail'	Varies between back [ɤ] and central [ɘ][15]
Korean	Gyeongsang dialect	거기/geogi	[ˈkɤ̘ɡɪ]	'there'	See Korean phonology
Marathi		मत	[mɤːt̪]	'opinion'	See Marathi phonology
Northern Tiwa	Taos dialect	mânpəumán	[ˌmã̀ˑˈpɤ̄u̯mã̄]	'it was squeezed'	May be central [ɘ] instead. See Taos phonology
Samogitian		õlgs	[ˈɤːl̪ˠgs]	'long'	May be central [ɘ] instead.
Scottish Gaelic		doirbh	[d̪̊ɤɾʲɤv]	'difficult'	See Scottish Gaelic phonology
Rusyn	Lemko variety	часы	[t͡ɕaˈsɤ]	'times'	Used only in place of etymological praslavic sound *y[16]
	Prešov variety
	Subcarpathian variety
Thai[17]		เธอ/thoe	[tʰɤː]	'you'
Yaqay		khoro	[xɤrɤ]	'frog'	Uncommon pronunciation of /o/.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles