The Schwa Sound How to Pronounce the Schwa How to Improve English Pronunciation
Hi, my name’s Sam.
Welcome to Oxford Online English.
In this lesson you can learn about the most
common sound in English.
What is the most common sound in English?
The most common sound in English is called
the schwa.
Do you know what a schwa sounds like, or how
to pronounce it?
In this class, you’ll learn about the schwa,
how to recognise it and how to pronounce it.
The schwa sound is pronounced like this: /ə/
It’s a very short, relaxed sound.
Just open your mouth a little, relax everything,
and let out a little bit of air: /ə/.
Let’s play a quick game.
Look at a sentence I just said:
In this lesson, you can learn about the most
common sound in English.
How many schwa sounds are there in this sentence?
It’s somewhere between zero and five.
Have a guess.
Go back and listen once more if you want to.
In this less/ə/n, you c/ə/n learn /ə/bout
th/ə/ most comm/ə/n sound in English.
You can see that I used the schwa sound five
times in just one short sentence.
So, now you know what the schwa is, but why
is it so important?
It’s helpful to know about the schwa sound
because recognising it will improve your listening
and being able to produce the sound will improve
your pronunciation.
But, learning about the schwa can be difficult,
because speakers of English use schwas in
different places, depending on their accent
and depending on which words the speaker chooses
to stress.
That means that you’ll hear different people
use schwa sounds differently.
I might use a schwa in a word, but another
native speaker might not.
So you know, I’m from the South of England,
and you’ll find that most speakers from
the South of England use the schwa in a similar
way.
Let’s start by looking at how you can hear
and recognise schwa sounds.
Here’s the IPA symbol for the schwa sound:
/ə/
It looks like an upside-down “e”.
This will help you to understand how to pronounce
words when you see them in a dictionary.
For example:
understand
/ʌndəˈstænd/
It’s helpful to use the schwa symbol when
you write down new vocabulary.
Write the schwa symbol under the letter or
letters where it appears.
That can help you to recognise the schwa sound
in new words, but what if you can’t check
the dictionary?
Even if you can’t check a word in the dictionary,
you can still find many schwa sounds in new
words.
Let’s see how.
The spelling of a word doesn’t help you
much if you’re trying to work out where
the schwa sounds might be.
Why is that?
It’s because schwa sounds don’t really
depend on spelling.
Also, schwa sounds can be produced by any
vowel letter: a, e, i, o or u.
For example:
/ə/bout
tel/ə/vision
medic/ə/ne
comm/ə/n
minim/ə/m
The schwa can also be produced by two or three
letters together, like this:
gov/ə/nment
press/ə/
cert/ə/n
So, the spelling won’t help you to find
a schwa, but the stress will; how?
One of the most important things to understand
about the schwa is that it only appears in
unstressed syllables.
Knowing which syllable is stressed in a word
can help you to find where the schwa sounds
are.
The schwa can appear at the beginning, middle
or end of a word, depending on where the stress
is.
/ə/bout
Und/ə/stand
Teach/ə/
You heard before that stress is more useful
than spelling if you’re looking for the
schwa sounds in a word.
That’s true, but there are some spelling
patterns which can help you to find a schwa
sound.
Let’s look!
One: if a word begins with the letter ‘a’
plus a consonant, the ‘a’ is often pronounced
with a schwa sound: about, across, address.
Of course, if the word begins with ‘a’
and ‘a’ is stressed, the ‘a’ will
not have a schwa sound.
For example: able, actor, artist.
Two: In a British accent, word endings such
as –er, - ar, -or, –our, or -ure, are
very often pronounced with a schwa sound:
teacher, dollar, visitor, colour, culture.
This rule is useful and will work most of
the time; however there are some exceptions,
such as guitar, insure, metaphor or flour.
Three: in words ending -ion or -ian, the letters
‘ia’ or ‘io’ always have a schwa sound:
politician, pronunciation, correction, musician,
discussion.
The same is true for words ending -ous, like
dangerous, nervous, or fabulous.
There are other spelling patterns, but these
are some of the most useful.
Next, let’s see how you can recognise schwa
sounds in phrases and sentences.
In almost every English sentence you hear,
there will be at least one schwa sound, and
probably more.
Let’s look at a sentence you probably use
often:
How are you?
Which words would normally be stressed in
this sentence?
Say it to yourself.
Can you work it out?
In this sentence, the stress is on how and
you.
The unstressed word in this sentence is are
and it is pronounced as a schwa sound.
Listen and try to hear it:
How /ə/ you?
So, how do you know which words are stressed
or unstressed?
The unstressed words in a sentence are usually
auxiliary words, articles and prepositions.
Words which carry the meaning of a sentence—nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs—are often
stressed.
Let’s look at some examples:
Do you like learning English?
In this sentence, the stressed words are like,
learning and English and there are no schwas
in those words.
The unstressed words are do and you and they
will often be pronounced as schwas.
Listen:
D/ə/ y/ə/ like learning English?
However, sometimes you might choose to stress
different words in a sentence.
If you hadn’t seen a friend for a long time,
you might stress are in this sentence.
If you do this, the schwa sound is replaced
with a longer vowel sound.
How /ɑ:/ you?
Look again at the question: Do you like learning
English?
If you want to make it clear who you’re
asking the question to, you can stress you,
which again makes the vowel sound longer:
D/ə/ y/ʊ:/
like learning English?
Here’s a phrase you might hear a lot in
the UK:
/ə/ cup of tea
The article a has a schwa sound.
However, if someone brought me two cups of
tea when I only wanted one, I might stress
a, like this:
I said I wanted /eɪ/ cup of tea.
Recognising the schwa can also help you understand
connected speech.
Let’s see how:
/ə/ cup of tea
Most English learners would find it easy to
understand this phrase when each word is pronounced
clearly.
However, in natural speech, the phrase might
sound more like this: /əkʌpəti:/
Here, a cup of becomes ‘a cuppa’, so of is
reduced to a schwa.
a cuppa tea
/əkʌpəti:/
Let’s practise together.
Repeat the phrases after me:
How /ə/ you?
D/ə/ y/ə/ like learning English?
/ə/ cup /ə/f tea
Being aware of schwas in connected speech
can really improve your English listening.
You can see that words and sentences are not
pronounced as they’re written.
Learning and practising schwa sounds can help
you to understand this.
Of course, using schwas and connected speech
in your English will also help you to sound
more fluent and natural!
Finally, let’s practise pronouncing the
schwa in words and sentences.
Look at some words and try to find the schwa
sounds.
Pause the video, write the words down and
mark the stressed syllables.
Then say the word and see if you can identify
the schwa.
Write the schwa symbol under the vowel.
Ready?
Let’s check.
Say the words after me:
picture, pict/ə/
around, /ə/round
smaller, small/ə/
horror, horr/ə/
national, nat/ə/n/ə/l
similar, simil/ə/r
temperature, temper/ə/t/ə/
celebration, cel/ə/brat/ə/n
happiness, happin/ə/ss
America, /ə/meric/ə/
Next, let’s try some phrases.
As before, pause the video, write the phrases
down and find the schwa sounds:
Ok?
Let’s check.
Say the phrases after me:
a slice of cake,
/ə/ slice /ə/f cake
a cat and a dog,
/ə/ cat /ə/nd /ə/ dog
an apple and a banana,
/ə/n apple /ə/nd /ə/ b/ə/nan/ə/
Next, let’s do some full sentences.
Again, pause the video, write the sentences
down and find the schwa sounds.
Ready?
Now, let’s check.
Repeat after me:
Where are you from?
Where /ə/ y/ə/ from?
What’s your favourite film?
What’s y/ə/ fav/ə/r/ə/te film?
What time do you get up?
What time d/ə/ y/ə/ get up?
That’s the end of this lesson.
I hope you learned something new about how
to recognise and produce the schwa sound in
English.
You can find many more free English lessons
on Oxford Online English.com.
Thanks for watching!
See you next time!