Vowels traditionally have been specified in terms of the position of the highest point of the tongue and the position of the lips. Figure 2 shows these positions for eight different vowels. The highest point of the tongue is in the front of the mouth for the vowels in heed, hid, head, and had. Accordingly, these vowels are classified as front vowels, whereas the vowels in hod, hawed, hood, and who’d are classified as back vowels. The tongue is highest in the vowels in heed and who’d, which are therefore called high, or close, vowels, and lowest in the vowels in had and hod, which are called low, or open, vowels. The height of the tongue for the vowels in the other words is between these two extremes, and they are therefore called midvowels. Lip positions may be described as being rounded, as in who’d, or unrounded or spread, as in heed.

The specification of vowels in terms of the position of the highest point of the tongue is not entirely satisfactory for a number of reasons. In the first place, it disregards the fact that the shape of the tongue as a whole is very different in front vowels and in back vowels. Second, although the height of the tongue in front vowels varies by approximately equal amounts for what are called equidistant steps in vowel quality, this is just not factually true in descriptions of back vowels. Third, the width of the pharynx varies considerably, and to some extent independently of the height of the tongue, in different vowels.

Some authorities use terms such as tense and lax to describe the degree of tension in the tongue muscles, particularly those muscles responsible for the bunching up of the tongue lengthways. Other authorities use the term tense to specify a greater degree of muscular activity, resulting in a greater deformation of the tongue from its neutral position. Tense vowels are longer than the corresponding lax vowels. The vowels in heed and hayed are tense, whereas those in hid and head are lax.

In many languages there is a strong tendency for front vowels to have spread lip positions, and back vowels to have lip rounding. As will be seen in the next section, this results in vowels that are acoustically maximally distinct. But many languages—e.g., French and German—have front rounded vowels. Thus French has a contrast between a high front unrounded vowel in vie, “life,” and a high front rounded vowel with a very similar tongue position in vu, “seen,” as well as a high back rounded vowel in vous, “you.” Unrounded back vowels also occur—e.g., in Vietnamese.

Nasalized vowels, in which the soft palate is lowered so that part of the airstream goes out through the nose, occur in many languages. French distinguishes between several nasalized vowels and vowels made with similar tongue positions but with the soft palate raised. Low vowels in many forms of English are often nasalized, especially when they occur between nasal consonants, as in man.

Because of the difficulty of observing the precise tongue positions that occur in vowels, a set of eight vowels known as the cardinal vowels has been devised to act as reference points. This set of vowels is defined partly in articulatory and partly in auditory terms. Cardinal vowel number one is defined as the highest and farthest front tongue position that can be made without producing a fricative sound; cardinal vowel number five is defined as the lowest and farthest back vowel. Cardinal vowels two, three, and four are a series of front vowels that form auditorily equidistant steps between cardinal vowels one and five; and cardinal vowels six, seven, and eight are a series of back vowels with the same sized auditory steps as in the front vowel series. Phoneticians who have been trained in the cardinal vowel system are able to make precise descriptions of the vowels of any language in terms of these reference points.