IPA reference · vowel
ʉ — close central rounded vowel
A high rounded vowel made in the middle of the mouth, with compressed rather than protruded lips.
How to make the close central rounded vowel
Tongue high and central — between /i/ and /u/ — with the lips compressed inward rather than pushed forward.
This sound does not occur in standard English. That means there is no word you can say to find it by accident; you have to build it from the articulatory instruction above and check it against a recording.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for ʉ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The English substitution, too far back.
What this means for learners
Swedish contrasts i, y and u as three distinct high vowels, which is a three-way distinction English speakers have to build from scratch.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of ʉ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ʉ make?
ʉ is the close central rounded vowel. A high rounded vowel made in the middle of the mouth, with compressed rather than protruded lips. It does not occur in standard English.
How do you pronounce ʉ?
Tongue high and central — between /i/ and /u/ — with the lips compressed inward rather than pushed forward.
Which languages have the close central rounded vowel?
Among the languages covered here: Swedish (hus, “house”); Norwegian (du, “you”).
What is the difference between ʉ and u?
The English substitution, too far back.