The phonetic symbol / ə /, also called the ‘schwa’, is ubiquitous in English. Take a look at these words:
Phonetic
Syllable
Station
Obvious
letter
All of the letters that are marked in bold and underlined are in an unstressed syllable, and the sound of all of them is / ə /. To see what I mean, listen to these words (one at a time) on Wordreference or another website where you can hear words and see how they're spelt in phonetics.
In fact, all of the vowel letters in English on their own - a, e, i, o and u can be pronounced as / ə /. The / ə / is therefore one of the most useful phonetic symbols, in terms of knowing how to pronounce an otherwise confusing array of letters...
If you want to practise recognising the sound / ə /, try reading through this text and see if you can spot where the / ə / sound is, or listen to it on a website where you can hear sentences.
You can also go to toPhonetics to see (and hear) words and also entire sentences, in phonetic symbols. Please note that tophonetics uses the symbol / ɛ / for / e /.
Type in your text and click on 'Show transcription'. Make sure to click on 'British', given that this is the accent I'm referring to in these blogs. Scroll down slightly to see the transcription, and also to listen to the text at varying speeds. I would recommend just below half way, otherwise it sounds unnaturally slow or fast! Here is an example:
So you see how common the / ə / sound is, even in a short sentence! Which means it's really useful to be able to identify it and use it to help you remember how to pronounce certain words.
Join me tomorrow for an exploration of the / ɜ: / sound, found in words like bird, word and heard. Any comments or questions? Just let me know in the comments section below!
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