47. The most important sound in English: [ə] - schwa, as in "the"

By Olga Smith

The schwa is the most used sound in English. It is important to sound fluent and natural. In our experience, almost all students of English make many mistakes with the schwa. Let’s have a look at this sound and sort it out once and for all! The schwa is highlighted in all examples below.

5 most important characteristics of the schwa [ə] are:

  1. It is the shortest sound in English.

  2. The schwa is always unstressed. It is pronounced in unstressed syllables and in a multi-syllable word there can be more than one schwa as in “conclusion, announcement, effortless”.

  3. It is a very neutral sound; when pronouncing the schwa, remember that your speech organs should be relaxed and neutral

  4. The schwa is used to make the speech more fluent because many unstressed syllables and even unimportant words are pronounced with the schwa.

  5. It is used in contracting unimportant words for the meaning of the sentence or phrases.

    5 main classes of words that have the neutral vowel shwa [ə]:

    1. Endings of names: Linda, Michael, Olga, Richard, Spencer.

    2. Auxiliary verbs in unstressed position will often have the schwa: have, has, had, were, was, are, am.

    3. Articles, prepositions and particles in unstressed position will often have the schwa: a, the, to, of, as, for, from.

    4. UK counties ending in “shire”: as in Oxfordshire, Berkshire

    5. Names of places ending in “ford” as in Stamford, Stratford.

Below are the most common mistakes people make when they do not know how and when using the schwa:

  1. They pronounce the words the way they are spelt. Many Latin words ending with “tion”,”sion” as in “emotion, confusion” are pronounced with the schwa at the end, but people whose native language is based on Latin, like Spanish for example, do not use the schwa and pronounce words the way they are spelt. English spelling and pronunciation are not the same. English pronounce unstressed ending “tion” , “sion” with the schwa. Prefix “con”, “ob” as in “conclusion”, “oblivious” are also pronounced with the schwa. But many wrongly pronounce [ɒ] as in “box”, instead.

  2. They make the schwa too long. Remember that the schwa is so short, it is almost not there.
    When you make the schwa too long it is not good English and even the stress in a word can change to the wrong one.

  3. Sometimes they pronounce [i:] as in “please” in the article “the”, they say thi: table. It is important to use the schwa. The only time you can pronounce “the” with a short sound [ɪ] as in “big” is when the next word starts with the vowel, for example, “thɪ illness.”

  4. They pronounce the article “a” as diphthong [eɪ] as in “pay”. The article “a” is always unstressed and should be pronounced with the schwa.

  5. They pronounce prepositions “of” and “from” with the sound [ɒ] as in “box”, these prepositions should be pronounced with the schwa.

  6. Quite often, they pronounce “r” which is in spelling in words with the schwa as in “doctor, sponsor, wondered”.

    We teach the schwa in all our books and apps. Practice lessons 6 with the following apps:
    Elocution Lessons, Get Rid of your Accent UK1, Business English Speech; practice the schwa in lessons 5 and 6 with the app Fluent English Speech.

    Olga Smith

    www.batcsglobal.com