Close central unrounded vowel

Close central unrounded vowel
ɨ
IPA number317
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)ɨ
Unicode (hex)U+0268
X-SAMPA1
Braille
Front Central Back
Close
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Legend: unrounded  rounded

The close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɨ⟩, namely the lower-case letter i with a horizontal bar. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as barred i.

Occasionally, this vowel is transcribed ⟨ï⟩ (centralizedi⟩) or ⟨ɯ̈⟩ (centralized ⟨ɯ⟩).

The close central unrounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the rare post-palatal approximant [ȷ̈].