IPA reference · vowel
e — close-mid front unrounded vowel
A pure mid-high front vowel with no glide.
How to make the close-mid front unrounded vowel
The first half of English "say", frozen before the glide starts. The jaw must not move during the vowel.
English reference points: chaotic (the first vowel, approximately). If you speak English natively you already produce this sound — the work is recognising it and placing it where the target language wants it.
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 e, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
Italian, French and Portuguese contrast the two; English speakers merge them.
What this means for learners
English speakers diphthongise this to /eɪ/ in every language they learn. Freezing the jaw is the fix.
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 e attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol e make?
e is the close-mid front unrounded vowel. A pure mid-high front vowel with no glide. In English you can hear it in: chaotic (the first vowel, approximately).
How do you pronounce e?
The first half of English "say", frozen before the glide starts. The jaw must not move during the vowel.
Which languages have the close-mid front unrounded vowel?
Among the languages covered here: Spanish (mesa, “table”); Italian (bene, “well”); Japanese (え, “e”).
What is the difference between e and ɛ?
Italian, French and Portuguese contrast the two; English speakers merge them.