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 form.

See Also

• Tense in Phonetics (definition)
• Frontness (definition)
• Backness (definition)
• Height (definition)
• Sounds of Gaelic
• Vowel (definition)

External Links

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

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

References

• Crystal, David. (1997) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. The language library. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
• Ladefoged, D. (2010) A Course in Phonetics. 6th Edition. Wadsworth Publishing.