Close-mid front unrounded vowel

The close-mid front 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 e, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is e.

Features of this vowel:

• Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
• Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Occurs in:

• French beauté [boˈte] 'beauty'
• German Seele [ˈzeːlə] 'soul'
• Spanish bebé [beˈβe] 'baby'

In many English dialects, this vowel occurs only as the first part of the diphthong [eɪ], as in late [leɪt], play [pleɪ].