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An example in Vietnamese is the letters ă and â representing lax vowels, and the letters a and ơ representing the corresponding tense vowels. Some languages like Spanish are often considered as having only tense vowels, but since the quality of tenseness is not a phonemic feature in this language, it cannot be applied to describe its vowels ...
The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel, respectively, but linguists often prefer to use the terms checked and free, as there is no clear-cut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness, and, because by most given definitions of tenseness, / ɔː / and / ɑː / are considered lax—even though ...
In American English, lax vowels [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ʌ, æ] do not appear in stressed open syllables. [15] In traditional grammar, long vowels vs. short vowels are more commonly used, compared to tense and lax. The two sets of terms are used interchangeably by some because the features are concomitant in some varieties of English. [clarification ...
The next dimension for vowels are tense/lax; here we can distinguish high/mid/low dimensions and the front/central/back dimensions. In other words, all vowels but schwas. Examples of tense and lax vowels are [i], [o] and [ɪ], [ɔ], respectively. Another characteristic of vowels is rounding.
Examples of words where vowel reduction seems to be distinctive for some speakers [78] include chickaree vs. chicory (the latter has the reduced vowel of HAPPY, whereas the former has the FLEECE vowel without reduction), and Pharaoh vs. farrow (both have the GOAT vowel, but in the latter word it may reduce to [ɵ]).
ATR vowels involve a certain tension in the tongue, often in the lips and jaw as well; the ear can often perceive this tension as a "brightness" (narrow formants) compared to RTR vowels [citation needed]. Nonetheless, phoneticians do not refer to ATR vowels as tense vowels since the word tense already has several meanings in European phonetics.
An example of that is the common German name Hans, which is pronounced in GA with the tense /ɑ/ rather than lax /æ/ (as in Britain's Received Pronunciation, which mirrors the German pronunciation with /a/: also has a lax vowel). [62] All of the tense vowels except /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e ...
Heavy and tense-r vowels are the respective lax and tense counterparts followed by r . Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a "silent" e that is added at the end of words. Thus, a in hat is lax /æ/, but when e is added in the word hate a is tense /eɪ/. Heavy and tense-r vowels follow a similar pattern, e.g. ar in car is heavy ...