Schwa

How it is used

Teachers point out that almost any vowel letter can be pronounced as schwa when unstressed (banana, problem, police). The weak forms of words like to, a, of and can also use schwa in natural speech.

Example sentences

1. In 'computer', the first and last vowels are both schwa.

2. Turkish learners often pronounce every vowel fully, so they need to practise the schwa.

Common collocations

• schwa sound
• reduced to schwa
• unstressed schwa
• weak form

Related terms

• vowelA speech sound made with the air flowing freely through the mouth, without the tongue or lips blocking it, such as the sounds in see, cat and boot.
• stressExtra force or length given to one syllable in a word, or to one word in a sentence, which makes it sound stronger and clearer than the others.
• syllableA unit of pronunciation built around a vowel sound, often with consonants before or after it; 'banana' has three syllables: ba-na-na.
• IPAShort for International Phonetic Alphabet: a set of symbols in which each symbol stands for one speech sound, used to write down pronunciation in any language.

More terms: Phonetics and Phonology

• phonetics
• phonology
• phoneme
• consonant
• intonation
• minimal pair
• allophone
• voiced
• place of articulation