24 March 2015 / by Elena Riches

'Schwa' - unstressed syllables

Before I was taught how to teach English, by Oxbridge TEFL, I had no idea that the word "schwa" existed. Today, I'm writing about the 'schwa', which isn't (incidentally) about the pronunciation of words such as 'Schwartz' and 'Schwarzkopf'...it's about pronouncing a sound, a sound that features a lot in the English language but, not in any other language.

The schwa (

LETTER - With this word, although the schwa sound comes in at the second "e" so that we say "letta", the problem is not so much the schwa but actually lies in the "r". Where Spanish speakers roll their r's it makes it impossible for them to pronounce it the way it should be due to this. If they tried saying it with an invisible "r", I think they'd get it right.

CHOCOLATE - It's never too LATE to learn how to pronounce "choclert" (with no rolling of the R, of course). The mispronunciation of this word kind of confuses me because it goes against the grain of the way it would be pronounced if it was a Spanish word...chock-o-la-teh, not chock-o-LATE.

CIRCUS - This is where the schwa is really dominant and one that probably confuses the hell out of non-native English speakers as it is neither pronounced "sir-cuss" nor "sir-couss".

COMFORTABLE - When students pronounce this word you ought to be forgiven for thinking that they're inviting you for dinner..."Come-for-table"...why, thank you for asking but I wouldn't feel "cum-fter-bul".

FAMOUS - Students are "fay-muss" for not being able to say this word correctly, simply because "ou" customarily looks like it should be pronounced "ooh".

MOUNTAIN - This is another word where the ending is pronounced as "tane" and understandably so when you have words like "attainable", "pertain", "tainted" etc, where the "tain" is pronounced as it is written.

It is unfortunate that the schwa sound doesn't belong to any particular vowel as this makes it very difficult to teach. You could explain to your students that vowels don't always sound like 'themselves' and sometimes a vowel can't remember the sound it's supposed to make, so it scratches its head and goes "uh?"

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