Don’t look at me like that. It is a word - one of the most common and important in the English language: look – I used it in my second sentence. Of course, it’s a letter first, and when we see it standing there, proud and tall, like a miniature Eiffel Tower, we want to give it its proper name, the name that we use when we recite the alphabet or read the initials of the creator of Winnie the Pooh, A.A.Milne: /eɪ/. But that’s not the sound of our Word of the Week.
(I have a confession to make: after talking a little last week about the way indefinite articles work, I’m not planning on talking about it again. I’ve chosen this word as an excuse to talk, not about meanings and grammar, but about the sounds of the English language, and one sound in particular. Now, before we begin, let me explain that when I represent sounds in writing I’ll be using a system called the IPA – the International Phonetic Alphabet. Whenever you see something sandwiched between two forward slashes /ðʌs/* you are looking at IPA symbols, each one of which corresponds to a specific sound. For the following explanation I’ve decided to invent the term “Ordinary Consonants” to refer to all the consonants except h, j, q, r, w, y and x. This term doesn’t really exist, but will save time and space.)
(And, talking of sounds, here’s a little challenge for you: how many different vowel sounds do I need to use in order to read out this sentence with natural rhythm and stress?
“A few of the numerous approved computers that you and the students’ useless tutors used to use were moved from a huge zoo, but who knew?”
You can check your answer at the end of this article.)
When we start to teach children to read, we don’t teach them the names of the letters straight away, as we’re scared of confusing them. The names of the vowels in English, we might say, correspond to the sound they make when placed in this space: “M_TE”. (Try it.) So, the letter A quite often makes the sound /eɪ/ - when it’s followed by a single Ordinary Consonant and then a vowel (late, place, cake), or when it’s followed by y (day, play, Bombay) or i (paid, straight, railway)– but the sound we usually associate with a vowel is the sound it typically makes in a short word with an Ordinary Consonant (or x) after it: /æ/ (man, catch, slang).
(Usually, typically…you know by now that there are always exceptions – watch, what and want, for example, have the same /ɒ/ sound we find in hot; past, last, plant and path, in r.p., have an /ɑː/ sound like car. )
But none of these is the sound of the indefinite article “a”.
The sound of “a” is the most common vowel sound in the English language (in most varieties spoken in Britain, North American and Australasia at least – you may not hear it at all in African English). It is such an important sound that, as well as an IPA symbol, it even has a name:
Schwa : /ə/
But, paradoxically, this incredibly important sound is only heard in “unimportant” syllables.
Schwa (which exists in French, German and Neapolitan, but not in Italian or Spanish) is a colourless, effortless, lazy sound, made in the middle of a relaxed, half-open mouth, emerging through un-rounded lips. In English, like some shy, nocturnal animal, schwa can only exist in the shadow of unstressed syllables. Shine the spotlight of stress on it and it disappears. This is why, as soon as you ask an English person to say the word “a”, on its own, they will probably say “/eɪ/” or “/æ /”. As soon as “a” has a place in a sentence, with a more important word next to it (or two, or three: look at the last “a” I wrote), we automatically read it with the correct /ə/ pronunciation.
In New Zealand, schwa is even more rampant, appearing in stressed syllables too, as the Kiwi accent tends to replace /ɪ/ with /ə/ - the classic example of this is their version of the classic English dish /fəʃ ən tʃəps/ (F*sh ’n’ Ch*ps).
In British, and North American, English,the articles “a” and “an” are pretty much the only words that we can say virtually always contain a schwa. “The” is “/ðə/” before a consonant, but “/ði:/” before a vowel, and when you say “Excuse me, I’ve just got to answer this call from Bill Gates,” and your English friend exclaims “What? The Bill Gates?!” that “the” will be “/ði:/”.
You will probably remember from your earliest lessons that, for example, the word “can” has a “weak” pronunciation in “Can you help us?” and a “strong” pronunciation in “Yes, we can!” Maybe you were already aware that that weak pronunciation was /ə/. This was your earliest indication of the terrible truth that you will never get your English pronunciation quite right until you’ve understood English stress patterns. Because: you know that thing that “can” does? Well, do, does, was, were, could, to, at, of, for, from, and, but, that and some all do it too.
Let’s look at that improbable sentence I gave you earlier. It contained the letter “A” 5 times, “E” 16 times, “O” 12 times and “U” 11 times. So if I read this sentence, how many vowel sounds do I use?
“A few of the numerous approved computers that you and the students’ useless tutors used to use were moved from a huge zoo, but who knew?”)
The answer? Just 2.
All of the 15 stressed syllables (underlined) contain the sound /u:/
Every single other vowel sound – in all of the 19 unstressed syllables – is /ə/. Schwa.
Schwa is the key to authentic English pronunciation. Want some intensive schwa practice? Keep saying that sentence until you are sure there are no vowels sounds escaping from your mouth apart from /u:/ or /ə/. Or go to New Zealand.
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