I also think of “schwa” as lazy because we turn many unstressed syllables into the “schwa” sound. In fact, roughly 20% of words in English contain a “schwa.” The sound can be spelled with any vowel, as in relative, elephant, mistake, today, and difficult, and a few vowel combinations, as in motion. So, within a word, unstressed syllables are often shortened to “schwa;” in addition, within a sentence, unstressed words (i.e., function words) are often shortened to “schwa,” as well. (See “Understanding the Rhythm of English” for more on rhythm and function words).
For example, the word “than” in isolation is pronounced /ðæn/. However, within the context of a sentence, it gets reduced to /ðən/. For example, “He’s taller than you.” (Listen). Listen to a few other examples of this phenomenon:
1. You have as many toys as he has. (Listen) 2. Meet me at six. (Listen) 3. She has left the room. (Listen) 4. I can dance. (Listen)
In these examples, the vowels in many of the function words are reduced to “schwa.” Remember, function words include articles, prepositions, pronouns, and positive auxiliaries.
For some fun facts about “schwa,” see language blogger and linguist Arika Okrent’s post, which describes “schwa” as the laziest sound there is! https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56821/9-fun-facts-about-schwa
*the same sound is also sometimes represented as /ʌ/ when the syllable is stressed, as in under and Doug.
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Blog AuthorJennie Parker has taught English language courses and instructor training courses in a variety of settings both in the US and abroad, including universities, nonprofits, business settings, and private language schools. Archives
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