Near-open vowel

A near-open vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a open vowel, but slightly more constricted. Near-open vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-open vowels. The near-open vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

• near-open front unrounded vowel []
• near-open central vowel []