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Close-mid back unrounded vowel

vowel sound

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ909114 ↗
Source-derived summary

The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, 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 still use a ram's horn for the voiced velar fricative.

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 ⟨⟩, that represented the sound before the 1928 revision to the IPA. The symbol was again revised to be ⟨⟩, "ram's horn", with a rounded top, in order to better differentiate it from the Latin gamma ⟨ɣ⟩.

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. 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.

Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.

It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Close-mid back unrounded vowel” is vowel sound. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Close-mid, back and unrounded, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1989, 1928—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Close-mid, back and unrounded is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “vowel sound” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q909114. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989 and 1928.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Close-mid back unrounded vowel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.