Schwa Sound

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Schwa, the most important weak vowel sound

When you are speaking American English the vowel within the stressed syllables is longer, louder and higher in pitch. The vowel within the unstressed syllable is reduced and become a neutral, short vowel called Schwa and is pronounced with the tongue in the neutral or rest position. The symbol used is /ə/. It can be spelled with a, e, i, o, or u. All of the five vowels can sound the same if they are part of a reduced syllable. As you can see, it is more important to know which syllabe is stressed than how the word is spelled. If people don't understand a particular word you are saying chances are you stressing the wrong syllable.

The combination of stressed syllables with long clear vowel sounds and reduced syllables with the Schwa vowel sound create a distinctly American English speech rhythm.

Exemples:
/ə/   about, banana, collide

Schwa is weak, unstressed vowel sound. It most frequently occurs adjacent to stressed syllables, and its pronunciation is very, very close to that of a short [ŭ] sound: /ʌ/.

Schwa does not have an exact and standard pronunciation. Due to the near-identical pronunciation of schwa and short [ŭ], many dictionaries merge the transcription of the two sounds and strictly use /ə/. Separate symbols are retained here to indicate whether a vowel sound falls on an unstressed or a stressed syllable (/ə/ and /ʌ/).

Schwa occurs in two different circumstances:

1.in an unstressed syllable of a multi-syllable word
2.as a reduced vowel sound in a function word

Schwa in an unstressed syllable

In words with more than one syllable, not every syllable is given equal emphasis when spoken. Three levels of syllable stress are possible:

1.stressed
2.secondarily stressed
3.unstressed

Every multi-syllable word has a single stressed syllable. The single stressed syllable of the word has the most emphasis. The remainder of the syllables may have a secondary stress or may be unstressed.

Example:
em·pha·size
/ˈɛm·fə·ˌsaɪz/

The word emphasize has all the levels of stress. The first syllable is stressed, the second syllable is an unstressed syllable pronounced as schwa, and the third syllable has a secondary stress.

An understanding of schwa as a weak vowel is so important for two reasons:

- it allows non-native speakers to better predict the pronunciation of a word from its spelling
- the rhythm of English relies on unstressed syllables as much as stressed syllables

Over-pronouncing unstressed syllables leads to choppy speech and it can fatigue your listeners because they'll be forced to adjust what they're hearing to what they expected to hear.

If you pronounce words with a strong and stressed vowel sounds instead of an unstressed vowel sound, it becomes very difficult to distinguish which syllable is stressed. As listeners, we rely on syllable stress for comprehension; it is a major clue as to which word we are hearing.

The spelling of schwa

Many multi-syllable words do not seem to be pronounced as they are spelled. This is because schwa is a function of syllable stress and not of spelling. Once learners can recognize stressed syllables, it becomes easier to predict when schwa will be used in an adjacent, unstressed vowel, regardless of the spelling. The examples below show schwa as it is exhibited when spelled with each vowel. The unstressed vowel sound, schwa, is underlined in each word.

You should find the following different spellings of schwa:

Schwa is spelled [a] in among , company
Schwa is spelled [e] in problem , enemy
Schwa is spelled [i] in president, cousin
Schwa is spelled [o] in confront, occur
Schwa is spelled [u] in success, support
Schwa is spelled [ai] in mountainous
Schwa is spelled [ea] in ocean
Schwa is spelled [ou] in famous

Dictionaries and schwa

Schwa is transcribed in pretty much every dictionary as an upside-down letter "e": /ə/. This, at least is consistent. However, some dictionaries will also use the schwa symbol (/ə/) for the short [ŭ] sound: /ʌ/. If your dictionary does this, you should understand that schwa and short [ŭ] are very nearly identical in pronunciation; you can assume that whenever you see an upside-down "e" (/ə/), you will use the vowel sound of the word sun, (short [ŭ] - /ʌ/). On the other hand, you will see the upside-down "v" (/ʌ/) in the transcription of the word sun in other dictionaries. This distinction is important.

Sometimes, dictionaries uses the "spelling pronunciation" Schwa sound and it's preceded by low stress as [ˌuh]; and the short [ŭ] is preceded by high stress [ˈuh]. This means the Schwa sound [ˌuh] or /ə/ and short [ŭ] or /ʌ/ have the same pronunciation but the first is unstressed and the second is stressed.

Introduction to schwa in function words

Proper use of schwa helps speakers adopt and maintain English sentence stress patterns. Certain grammatical words called function words can have two different pronunciations in spoken English: a citation form and a reduced form.

The citation form of a word is the pronunciation shown first in a dictionary transcription. It is the pronunciation used when the word is spoken alone or out of context. Citation form pronunciation is actually less common than the reduced pronunciation of function words.

If a dictionary transcribes reduced forms of words, it is usually noted as a secondary transcription. If this transcription shows the vowel sound of function words reduced to schwa, the vowel sound of the word is said quicker and with a more neutral vowel sound than the citation pronunciation. Function words are typically only reduced when the word is used within a sentence, and not if the word is being spoken in isolation. The purpose of reduced pronunciations is to help function words fall into the background of speech, while content words gain emphasis.

Reduced Function Words:

Examples	-	Dictionary Citation	-	Reduced Citation (Schwa)
can	-	/kæn/	-	/kən/
do	-	/du/	-	/də/
to	-	/tu/	-	/tə/
you	-	/ju/	-	/jə/

r-controlled Vowel: schwa + [r] = /ɚ/

The r-controlled Vowel is a sound with schwa /ə/ and /r/ sound next to each other to form the /ɚ/ sound.

The syllabic [r]: Because the schwa + [r] has no discernible vowel sound, it is considered a syllabic consonant. Syllabic consonants include a vowel in the spelling, even though that vowel is not pronounced. When learning about r-controlled vowels, syllable stress is important because any unstressed syllable containing an [r] may be pronounced as /ə+r/, no matter which vowel is included in the spelling.

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