> To find out about the schwa read any book on phonetics (e.g.  J. D. O'Connor,
PHONETICS, Penguin 1973).   It is one of the 'phonemes' that make up the array
of sounds that we actually speak.  For example, it is obvious that an 'oo' sound
occurs in both the words 'whose' and 'beauty', but the everyday spelling gives
no hint of it.  I very early taught my students the International Phonetic
Alphabet and they had great fun in discovering what the real sounds we spoke
actually were.  I used to start with their own names.  It was of huge benefit in
teaching poetry, as well as analysing the rhetorical rhythm of prose (and of
advertisements!), as it demonstrated where the repetition of vowels and
consonants really was.  O'Connor gives IPA complete;  it is very easy to learn
as many of the symbols correspond to normal orthography.

The schwa is the phoneme that very many vowel sounds in unstressed positions
tend to gravitate to, hence its being the most common phoneme.  It is
written in IPA as an upside-down 'e'.   Typical occurrences are the last 'e'
in 'advertisement' and 'president';  the last syllables of 'honour',
'weather', 'ladder', etc;  the first 'o' and the 'a' in 'photography';  the
first and last 'a' in 'American';  the vowel-sound in 'the' (when not
emphasized, for then it is pronounced 'thee' -- at least in English
English!);  and so on.

The IPA font can be obtained for your laptop (PC or Mac).  It is called 'IPA
Kiel Seven' and is obtainable in a package with other phonetic fonts from
Linguist's Software, P.O. Box 580, Edmonds WA, 98020 - 0580;  email address
[log in to unmask]

Edmond Wright



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