The Schwa

I want to be a schwa, it’s never stressed! Literally, it is never stressed. Even though it doesn’t have stress, the schwa is an important sound in spoken English. It’s so important, it has its own name. So, what is a schwa? It is a fancy word for the ‘uh’ sound as in ‘uh oh.’

 

Stress

English is a stress-timed language, which means that key words are lengthened, while other words, usually the function words, in the phrase are shortened or combined. This is one reason non-native speakers assume that native speakers speak quickly. I like to tell clients that native speakers ‘smoosh’ and ‘slash’ words. Meaning, they shorten and eliminate sounds and words as much as possible. For example, in the sentence, ‘I went to the store,’ if ‘store’ is the key word, it takes the speaker the same length of time to say, ‘I went to the’ as it does ‘store.’ Non-native speakers tend to pronounce each sound and word.

This also means that unstressed vowels are reduced, or shorter, and tend to become a schwa. In the same example as above, ‘I went to the store,’ the vowels in ‘to’ and ‘the’ are shortened to ‘uh,’ so the sentence sounds like ‘I wentuh thuh store.’

If you have a difficult time hearing the key word, think about the one word in a phrase or sentence that cannot be ‘smooshed’ with the other ones. Below are words that are often reduced in connected speech.

Word	Becomes
to	‘tuh’
was	‘wuz’
the	‘thuh’
are	‘er’
of	‘uv’
a	‘uh’
that	‘thut’
for	‘fer’
you	‘ya’
at	‘ut’
or	‘er’
your, you’re	‘yer’

Nonnative speakers may think that reducing vowel sounds and not saying the true form of a word is lazy or slang. However, it’s just the opposite. Word reductions are part of what gives spoken English its rhythm.

Give it a try! In conversation, try eliminating as many words and sounds as you can. Notice how it feels to do this and how the listener understands your message. The brain doesn’t need to hear every sound and word. It fills in the cracks for us.

What other tricks do you use for nonnative speakers to improve their naturalness of spoken English?