Vowel phone

A vowel phone is a phone that represents a vowel sound in spoken language.

Vowel phones are characterised by the relatively unrestricted airflow during their production, in contrast to consonant phones, which involve significant constriction.

Vowel phones can be classified in several ways:

• By vowel height, which refers to how high or low the tongue is in the mouth during articulation. For example, high vowels like [i] have the tongue positioned close to the roof of the mouth, while low vowels like [a] have the tongue lowered.
• By vowel backness, which refers to how far forward or back the tongue is. Front vowels, like [e], are articulated with the tongue pushed forward, while back vowels, like [u], are produced with the tongue further back.
• By vowel roundedness, i.e., whether the lips are rounded or unrounded during production. Rounded vowels, such as [o], involve rounding the lips, while unrounded vowels, such as [a], do not.
• By vowel nasality, distinguishing oral vowels, which are produced without nasal airflow, from nasal vowels, where air escapes through the nose as well as the mouth.

According to the phone-phoneme distinction, a vowel phone is not necessarily the same as a vowel phoneme, which may be realised by different allophones depending on the context.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), vowel phones are represented by written characters using phonetic notation.

Cardinal vowels are a set of standard reference vowels used to compare vowel qualities across languages, representing extreme points of articulation.