Close front unrounded vowel

The close front unrounded vowel(also called high front unrounded vowel), is a type of vowel. It is an i in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It sounds like the English word meet. It is also called a long-e in American English. In English this sound has more length then it should and is not usually pronounced as a pure vowel(it is a diphthong). A pure [i] sound can be heard in languages such as French with words like chic.

Close front unrounded vowel
i
IPA Number	301
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	i
Unicode (hex)	U+0069
X-SAMPA	i
Braille

IPA: Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
Near-close	ɪ ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
Mid	e̞ ø̞	ə	ɤ̞ o̞
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
Near-open	æ	ɐ
Open	a ɶ	ä	ɑ ɒ

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Vowels beside dots are: unrounded • rounded

In languages

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Afrikaans		dief	[dif]	'thief'	See Afrikaans phonology
Arabic	Standard	دين/diin	[d̪iːn]	'religion'	See Arabic phonology
Catalan		sic	[ˈsik]	'sic'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	七 / qī	[tɕʰi˥]	'seven'	See Standard Chinese phonology
Chuvash		çип	[ɕ̬ip]	'thread'
Czech		bílý	[ˈbiːliː]	'white'	See Czech phonology
Dutch		biet	[bit]	'beet'	See Dutch phonology
English	All dialects	free	[fɹiː]	'free'	In certain dialects, it can be pronunced as a diphthong. See English phonology
	Australian	bit	[bit]	'bit'	Also described as near-close front [ɪ̟]. See Australian English phonology
French		fini	[fini]	'finished'	See French phonology
German		Ziel	[t͡siːl]	'goal'	See Standard German phonology
Greek	Modern Standard	κήπος / kípos	[ˈc̠ipo̞s̠]	'garden'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hungarian		ív	[iːv]	'arch'	See Hungarian phonology
Italian		bile	[ˈbiːle̞]	'rage'	See Italian phonology
Japanese		銀/gin	[ɡʲiɴ]	'silver'	See Japanese phonology
Khmer		លទ្ធិ / lôtthĭ	[lattʰiʔ]	'doctrine'	See Khmer phonology
Korean		아이 / ai	[ɐi]	'child'	See Korean phonology
Kurdish	Kurmanji (Northern)	şîr	[ʃiːɾ]	'milk'	See Kurdish phonology
	Sorani (Central)	شیر/šîr
	Palewani (Southern)
Lithuanian		vyras	[viːrɐs̪]	'man'	See Lithuanian orthography
Malay	Malaysian Malay	ikut	[i.kʊt]	'to follow'	See Malay phonology
Polish		miś	[ˈmʲiɕ]	'teddy bear'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese		fino	[ˈfinu]	'thin'	Also occurs as an unstressed allophone of other vowels. May be represented by ⟨y⟩. See Portuguese phonology
Romanian		insulă	[ˈin̪s̪ulə]	'island'	See Romanian phonology
Rungus		rikot	[ˈri.kot]	'to come'
Russian		лист/list	[lʲis̪t̪]	'leaf'	Will only be used after palatalized consonants. See Russian phonology
Serbo-Croatian		vile	[ʋîle̞]	'hayfork'	See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Spanish		tipo	[ˈt̪ipo̞]	'type'	Can be written by ⟨y⟩. See Spanish phonology
Sotho		ho bitsa	[huˌbit͡sʼɑ̈]	'to call'	Contrasts close, near-close and close-mid front unrounded vowels. See Sotho phonology
Swedish	Central Standard	bli	[bliː]	'to stay'	See Swedish phonology
Thai		กริช/krit	[krìt]	'dagger'
Turkish		ip	[ip]	'rope'	See Turkish phonology
Ukrainian		місто/misto	['misto]	'city, town'	See Ukrainian phonology
Welsh		es i	[eːs iː]	'I went'	See Welsh phonology
Yoruba		síbí	[síbí]	'spoon'

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