IPA reference · vowel
ʊ — near-close near-back rounded vowel
A laxer, more central and shorter counterpart to /u/.
Also called: short u, foot vowel
How to make the near-close near-back rounded vowel
Relax from the /u/ position — the tongue drops slightly and moves toward the centre, and the lip rounding loosens.
English reference points: foot, put, good. 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 ʊ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The "full/fool" contrast, collapsed by many learners of English.
What this means for learners
German contrasts short /ʊ/ and long /uː/ phonemically, and the difference is quality as well as duration.
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 ʊ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ʊ make?
ʊ is the near-close near-back rounded vowel. A laxer, more central and shorter counterpart to /u/. In English you can hear it in: foot, put, good.
How do you pronounce ʊ?
Relax from the /u/ position — the tongue drops slightly and moves toward the centre, and the lip rounding loosens.
Which languages have the near-close near-back rounded vowel?
Among the languages covered here: German (Mutter, “mother”); Dutch (hond, “dog”).
What is the difference between ʊ and u?
The "full/fool" contrast, collapsed by many learners of English.