Talk:Open vowel

English "open vowel" examples

I just chopped the line Examples of words in English with open vowel sounds include "he", "high", and "hoe," and the "who" sound in "hooter" when said repeatedly in imitation of an owl entirely. The only one that potentially includes an open vowel is high, and it's still a bad example. He and who unambiguously across English dialects have high vowels, aka the exact opposite of the given definition of open vowels. Hoe at least isn't a high vowel, but in many (I'd like to say most if not all) dialects it's closer to high than it is to low (open). Open vowels are one of the most fiendishly complex areas where English dialects differ, otherwise I'd put some better examples. Drydic guy (talk) 19:04, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

"Open vowels are used in nearly[clarification needed] all[citation needed] spoken languages"

How many is "nearly all"? How close to "all" is it? Who says "open vowels are used in nearly all spoken languages"? How do they know? How reliable are they? Eldin raigmore (talk) 19:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

should be clarified?

"An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth." If I take this literally, I would open my jaw wide, as if tried to take a bite from an oversized cheeseburger. That would be the position where my tongue is positioned "as far as possible" from the roof of the mouth. And that is certainly one possible position to articulate open vowels, but not a common one. I can close my mouth quite a long way and still make basically the same sound. So this should be defined via a minimum distance, perhaps? I'm not exactly sure how to define it, but this definition seems misleading. Addendum: This seems to give a more precise explanation. I don't quite get it myself yet, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel#Height

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:908:1023:C1E0:38EE:3B2A:7F9A:8D99 (talk) 12:48, 4 March 2022 (UTC)