Front vowel

Legend: unrounded • rounded A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherwise make it a consonant.

Rounded front vowels are typically centralized, that is, near-front in their articulation.

Phonemic raised and retracted vowels may be phonetically fronted by certain consonants, such as palatals and in some languages pharyngeals.

[2] In the history of many languages, for example French and Japanese, front vowels have altered preceding velar or alveolar consonants, bringing their place of articulation towards palatal or postalveolar.

However, for native or early borrowed words affected by palatalization, English has generally altered the spelling after the pronunciation (Examples include cheap, church, cheese, churn from /*k/, and yell, yarn, yearn, yeast from /*ɡ/.)