IPA reference · vowel
ɤ — close-mid back unrounded vowel
/o/ with the lips completely unrounded.
How to make the close-mid back unrounded vowel
Say /o/ and spread the lips flat while keeping the tongue in place. It sounds hollow, like a suppressed groan.
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 ɤ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The English substitution; in Bulgarian ъ is a full stressable vowel, not a reduction.
What this means for learners
Mandarin e in *de*, *le*, *he* is this vowel, which is why pinyin e is so misleading to English readers.
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 ɤ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ɤ make?
ɤ is the close-mid back unrounded vowel. /o/ with the lips completely unrounded. It does not occur in standard English.
How do you pronounce ɤ?
Say /o/ and spread the lips flat while keeping the tongue in place. It sounds hollow, like a suppressed groan.
Which languages have the close-mid back unrounded vowel?
Among the languages covered here: Bulgarian (ъгъл, “corner”); Chinese (饿, “hungry”).
What is the difference between ɤ and ə?
The English substitution; in Bulgarian ъ is a full stressable vowel, not a reduction.