Open front unrounded vowel |Open front unrounded vowel| The open
front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type
of vowel sound, used in many vocal languages. According to the
official standards of the International Phonetic Association,
the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that
represents this sound is ⟨a⟩. In practice, however, it is very
common to approximate this sound with ⟨æ⟩ (officially a near-
open (near-low) front unrounded vowel),citation needed and to
use ⟨a⟩ as an open (low) central unrounded vowel. This is the
normal practice, for example, in the historical study of the
English language. The loss of separate symbols for open and
near-open front vowels is usually considered unproblematic,
since the perceptual difference between the two is quite small,
and very few, if any, languages contrast the two. See open
central unrounded vowel for more information. If one needs to
make it explicit that the vowel they're talking about is front,
they can use symbols like [a̟] ([a] wi