In phonetics, a lowered sound is articulated with the tongue or lip lowered (the mouth more open) than some reference point. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this is indicated with the downtack diacritic [  ̞]. Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

In the case of a vowel, lowering means that the vowel is more open. For example, <e̞> represents a vowel somewhere between cardinal [e] and [ɛ], or may even be [ɛ]. Austrian German has a rounded version of the near-open front unrounded vowel [æ], which can be transcribed as [œ̞]. An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... Vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ...

With consonants, lowering changes the manner of articulation. Lowered fricatives are approximants. For example, the ambiguous symbols for rear approximant/fricatives can be specified as approximants with the lowering diacritic, [ʁ̞, ʕ̞, ʢ̞]. In Spanish, the "weak" allophones of the voiced consonants are often transcribed as fricatives, even though they are approximants, at least partially because there is a dedicated symbol for only one of them (the velar). The downtack can be used to disambiguate these as well: [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞]. In speech there are different ways of producing a consonant. ... Jump to: navigation, search Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

• See also Raised.