Editing Roundedness (section)

{{Short description|How the lips form during the articulation of a vowel}}
{{about|roundedness in vowels|roundedness in consonants|Labialization|internal rounding|Sulcalization|other uses|Roundness (disambiguation)}}
{{IPA notice}}

In [[phonetics]], '''vowel roundedness''' is the amount of rounding in the [[lip]]s during the articulation of a [[vowel]]. It is [[labialization]] of a vowel. When a ''rounded'' vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and ''unrounded'' vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, [[front vowel]]s tend to be unrounded, and [[back vowel]]s tend to be rounded. However, some languages, such as [[French language|French]], [[German language|German]] and [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]], distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same [[vowel height|height]] (degree of openness), and [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. [[Alekano language|Alekano]] has only unrounded vowels.{{sfnp|Deibler|1992}} 

In the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, {{unichar|0339|COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW|ulink=Phonetic symbols in Unicode|cwith=◌}} and {{unichar|031C|COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW|ulink=Phonetic symbols in Unicode|cwith=◌}}, to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively.
Thus {{IPA|[o̜]}} has less rounding than cardinal {{IPA|[o]}}, and {{IPA|[o̹]}} has more (closer to the rounding of cardinal {{IPA|[u]}}). These diacritics can also be used with unrounded vowels: {{IPA|[ɛ̜]}} is more spread than cardinal {{IPA|[ɛ]}}, and {{IPA|[ɯ̹]}} is less spread than cardinal {{IPA|[ɯ]}}.<ref>'Further report on the 1989 Kiel Convention', ''Journal of the International Phonetic Association'' 20:2 (December 1990), p. 23.</ref>