/ɪ/

For a note on how AWE organizes its group of articles on vowels, basically by aspects of sound and of writing, see category:vowels.

The symbol /ɪ/ ( a 'small capital I') is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to mean the near-close near-front vowel, or near-high near-front vowel, without rounding, heard in such English words as 'it', 'is', 'him' and 'sit'. This can be a very varied vowel. The written letter i can represent other vowels produced in fairly central positions, such as /ɜ/ and sometimes schwa, /ə/. Different accents can also realize the /i/ phoneme as these vowels as well.

The phoneme, however it may be realized by any individual speaker, is nearly always spelled with the letter i (upper case I).

• In 45 words (Bell (2004), it is represented by y: this is particularly true of words that originate from classical Greek, such as 'myth', 'analysis' and 'symbol'.
• Less regularly, it is represented by other vowel letters such as
  • e, in 'pretty' and 'English';
  • o, in 'women';
  • u, in 'busy' and 'business', and in combination with i in 'build' and its derivatives.

Note that although the adjective live and the number five are pronounced, as might be expected from the use of the magic 'e', with the diphthongal /aɪ/, the verbs 'to live' and 'to give', which have the same spelling, have the short /ɪ/; similarly, although liver, river shiver and quiver are short, fiver and diver are diphthongal.

Much of the information on this page has been taken from McArthur and Bell (2004).