Round (definition)

The term round refers to the position of the lips when certain vowels are produced. The lips are physically rounded when these types of sounds are produced.

• Round vowels in English are [ɔ,o,u,ʊ] and the diphthong [oʊ]
• Round vowels in Gaelic are [u,u:,ũ,ũ:,o,o:,ɔ,ɔ:,ɔ̃,ɔ̃:]

Certain consonants may also be articulated with a rounded lip gesture. For example English [r] and [w] are both pronounced with lip rounding. In Gaelic labial consonants receive extra lip rounding before front vowels, when in their [[Broad (definition)|broad] form.

See Also

Tense in Phonetics (definition) Frontness (definition) Backness (definition) Height (definition)

External Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness

• http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/linguistics/vowels.html#round

References

• Crystal, David. (1997) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. The language library. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.