Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

Hi, RipperDoc!

The schwa is a vowel that occurs in a lot of unstressed syllables in English
(& other languages I suppose, but I don't know what percentage of the
world's languages).

It's kind of like "u" as in "umbrella," but it's unstressed (shorter &
pronounced with less effort).

It's how we pronounce "a" as in "ago," for instance.

It's also how we almost always pronounce the "e" as in "the."    Oh, sure,
in melodramatic or high-fallutin' readings, we might say "THEE apple tree."
But in everyday speech, it's more like "thuh apple tree."

In dictionary-phonetic spelling, and also in the easier International
Phonetic Alphabet, the schwa is  spelled with an inverted lower-case "e."

Hope this helps,

Jim G.

P.S.   I bet others on this list will give you more info.


> Just a little question from a newbie, what is schwa?
>
> /RipperDoc
>

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