. According to the British phonetician John C. Wells, it is often noticeably centralized : somewhat closer to a central vowel in palatal contexts. is open-mid back. It is somewhat more open than cardinal , and intermediate between them in terms of labialization. There is no complete agreement about the rounding of : According to , it is usually somewhat rounded , but sometimes, it is pronounced with neutral lips . In the latter case, the lack of rounding is compensated for by a stronger retraction of the tongue. According to , citing , it is unrounded . According to , it is simply "rounded" . There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants: According to , it can be any of the following: open-mid centralized back rounded , raised open-mid back rounded or mid advanced back rounded According to , it is close-mid advanced back rounded . According to , it is close-mid central rounded vowel . According to , a close-mid back is a free variant before . Open is open central unrounded . According to most sources, it is intermediate between cardinal and . However, describes it broadly as open front unrounded . Traditionally, is used even in otherwise narrow transcriptions. There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants: According to , it is open front unrounded . According to , it is open front unrounded or even near-open front unrounded . She uses for the main central allophone. According to , it is near-open central unrounded . According to , it is near-open near-front unrounded . Distribution The vowels and have largely complementary distribution. Either vowel may follow a labial consonant, as in mi ('to me') and my ('we'). Elsewhere, however, is usually restricted to word-initial position and positions after alveolo-palatal consonants and approximants , while cannot appear in those positions (see § Hard and soft consonants below). Either vowel may follow a velar fricative but after velar the vowel is limited to rare loanwords e.g. kynologia ('cynology') and gyros ('gyro'). Dental, postalveolar consonants and approximants are followed by in native or assimilated words. However, appears outside its usual positions in some foreign-derived words, as in chipsy ('potato chips') and tir ('large lorry', see TIR). The degree of palatalization in these contexts is weak. In some phonological descriptions of Polish that make a phonemic distinction between palatalized and