This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2016) |
Schwa | |||
---|---|---|---|
ə | |||
IPA Number | 322 | ||
See also mid central vowel | |||
Audio sample | |||
Encoding | |||
Entity (decimal) | ə | ||
Unicode (hex) | U+0259 | ||
|
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (/ʃwɑː/ shwah, rarely /ʃwɔː/ shwaw or /ʃvɑː/ shvah;[1] sometimes spelled shwa)[2] is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol ⟨ə⟩, placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it usually represents the mid central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded), produced when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, such as the vowel sound of the ⟨a⟩ in the English word about.
The name schwa and the symbol ⟨ə⟩ may be used for some other unstressed and toneless neutral vowels, not necessarily mid central, as it is often used to represent reduced vowels in general.[3] It also has been historically used to describe a canonical phonetic range covering a vast central area from near-close [ɪ̈] to near-open [ɐ]. [4][full citation needed]
In English, /ə/ is traditionally treated as a weak vowel that may occur only in unstressed syllables, but in accents with the STRUT–COMMA merger, such as Welsh English, some higher-prestige Northern England English, and some General American, it is merged with /ʌ/ and so /ə/ may then be considered to occur in stressed syllables.[5]
In Albanian, Romanian, Slovene, Balearic Catalan, Mandarin and Afrikaans, schwa can occur in stressed or unstressed syllables.
A similar sound is the short French unaccented ⟨e⟩, which is rounded and less central, more like an open-mid or close-mid front rounded vowel.
Sometimes, the term schwa can be used for any epenthetic vowel. Across languages, schwa vowels are commonly deleted in some instances such as in Hindi, North American English, French and Modern Hebrew. In phonology, syncope is the process of deleting unstressed sounds, particularly unstressed vowels such as schwa.
© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search