Schewa

The laziest one

 What is
Schewa?

Its a vowel which involves a neutral tongue, lip and jaw

position.
Its phonemic symbol is //.
It only appears in unstressed syllables.
It can represent all written vowels (a (around), e (mother),
i (pencil), o (London) and u (suggest))
The Schwa Is the Laziest Sound
in All of Human Speech
Schwa is weak, it is an unstressed sound and it occurs in
many words. It is often the sound in grammar words such
as articles and prepositions.
Getting the schwa sound correct is a good way of making
your pronunciation more accurate and natural.
The phonemic symbol for this sound is Schwa.
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.

The word emphasize has all the levels of stress. The first syllable is stressed, the second syllable is an
 When does Schewa
occurs?
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

To take into account!

1. ANY WRITTEN VOWEL CAN BE A SPOKEN SCHWA

2. IT'S THE MOST COMMON VOWEL SOUND IN ENGLISH

3. THE WORD "SCHWA" COMES FROM HEBREW

4. THE SYMBOL WAS INVENTED TO SHOW HOW PEOPLE REALLY TALKED

5. BEFORE PEOPLE STARTED CALLING IT "SCHWA" IN ENGLISH (AROUND 1895) IT HAD A LOT OF NICKNAMES

6. ENGLISH HAS A TENDENCY TO DELETE A SYLLABLE WITH A SCHWA

7. BUT ENGLISH SOMETIMES HAS A TENDENCY TO STICK IN EXTRA SCHWA SYLLABLES

8. SCHWA IS SO PREVALENT BECAUSE ENGLISH IS A STRESS-TIMED LANGUAGE