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A vowel diagram or vowel chart is a schematic arrangement of within a phonetic system. Vowels do not differ in place, manner, or voicing in the same way that do. Instead, vowels are distinguished primarily based on their vowel height (vertical tongue position), vowel backness (horizontal tongue position), and roundness (lip articulation). Depending on the particular language being discussed, a vowel diagram can take the form of a triangle or a quadrilateral.
The vowel diagram of the International Phonetic Alphabet is based on the cardinal vowels system, displayed in the form of a trapezoid. In the diagram, convenient reference points are provided for specifying tongue position. The position of the highest point of the arch of the tongue is considered to be the point of articulation of the vowel.
By definition, no vowel sound can be plotted outside of the IPA trapezium because its four corners represent the extreme points of articulation. The vowel diagrams of most real languages are not so extreme. In English language, for example, high vowels are articulated lower than in the IPA trapezium, and front vowels are articulated further back.
The vowel systems of most languages can be represented by vowel diagrams. Usually, there is a pattern of even distribution of vowel placement on the diagram, a phenomenon that is known as vowel dispersion. Most languages have a vowel system with three articulatory extremes, forming a vowel triangle. Only 10% of languages, including English, have a vowel system with four extremes. Such a diagram is called a vowel quadrilateral or a vowel trapezium.
Vowels may also be categorized by their perceived tenseness, with lax vowels being positioned more centralized on vowel diagrams than their tense counterparts. The vowel is in the center of the IPA trapezium and is frequently referred to as the neutral vowel, due to its fully lax articulation. In many languages, including English, the vowels and are often considered lax variants of their tense counterparts and , and are placed more centralized in the IPA trapezium.
Different vowels vary in pitch. For example, high vowels, such as and , tend to have a higher fundamental frequency than low vowels, such as . Vowels are distinct from one another by their acoustic form or spectral properties. Spectral properties are the speech sound's fundamental frequency and its .
Each vowel in the vowel diagram has a unique first and second formant, or F1 and F2. The frequency of the first formant refers to the width of the pharyngeal cavity and the position of the tongue on a vertical axis and ranges from open to close. The frequency of the second formant refers to the length of the oral cavity and the position of the tongue on a horizontal axis. , , are often referred to as point vowels because they represent the most extreme F1 and F2 frequencies. has a high F1 frequency because of the narrow size of the pharynx and the low position of the tongue. The F2 frequency is higher for because the oral cavity is short and the tongue is at the front of the mouth. The F2 frequency is low in the production of u because the mouth is elongated and the lips are rounded while the pharynx is lowered.Eva M. Fernández and Helen Smith Cairns (2025). 9781405191470, Wiley-Blackwell. . ISBN 9781405191470
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