The open back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spokenlanguages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɒ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Q. The symbol <ɒ> is called turned script a, because it is a rotated version of script a, so-called because it lacks the extra stroke on top of a printed 'a'. Turned script a, which has its linear stroke on the left, should not be confused with script a<ɑ>, which has its linear stroke on the right and corresponds to an unrounded version of this vowel, the open back unrounded vowel. A well rounded [ɒ] is rare, though it is found in some varieties of English. In most languages with this vowel, such as English and Persian, the rounding of [ɒ] is slight. However, Assamese has an "over-rounded" [ɒ̹] with rounding as strong as that for [u].
Features
Its vowel height is open, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth.
Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
Sound sample (help·info)
