English Schwa Sound [ə] – What It Is & How To Get It Right!

Hi Robby!

When it comes to the word “hamburger” you’re absolutely right: I confused schwa and the preceding vowel of R and I have never thought about it this way like you described it. It’s good to know that phonetic transcriptions can be so misleading if you haven’t sufficient background knowledge. I kind of knew that some perceive R as a vowel and some other as a consonant but I thought it was just the matter of semantics and not anything more. I have never seriously thought that perceiving R as a vowel could help you to pronounce it like native English speakers.

And speaking of the difficulty of schwa and other schwa-related problem words I think you’re at least partly right but maybe you’re still partly wrong but I’m not sure. I have had problems with the words like “circumstance” or “Manchester” or “Worcestershire”, for example. If I try to pronounce the word “Manchester”, I think my pronunciation is somewhat better when I pronounce it with R:s (“my English R” is less rolled than “my Finnish R” but it’s still rolled and “native English R” is non-rolled) but when I pronounce it without R I kind of blurt it easily: ‘mæntʃestÖÖ which sounds terrible! The same goes with Worcestershire: ‘wu:stəʃə becomes ‘wu:stÖʃÖ (terrible!). Schwa is difficult in itself.

When I had heard words with schwa first time a long time ago I thought that schwa sounds weak and a bit weird but it still sounds like Finnish ö or something like that. And this equating is surely one of those reasons why I have problems with schwa. Now I think it’s the best to perceive schwa as its own unique sound but it’s difficult because schwa sounds dangerously similar for Finns. And the second reason why schwa is so difficult is that after all vowel reduction, unstressed syllables and the meaning of schwa is alien for me because there isn’t any kind of vowel reduction in Finnish at all. Even in the unstressed syllables of the Finnish words vowels are either pronounced as they are or they are omitted completely (but there are not any silent letters in Finnish). This is surely one reason which makes English pronunciation and especially schwa-sound difficult for some foreigners and especially for Finns because there isn’t any kind of vowel reduction in Finnish. I have actually always wondered why English speakers have to reduce their vowels or unstress some syllables so much because it makes pronunciation and listening comprehension more difficult at least in my opinion. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future when I’m getting used better and better with vowel reduction, unstressing and with other peculiarities of English language but my native background remains still the same.

And as the curiosity if I’m precise you actually pronounce my name like Jhuhaphekha with “aspirated j and p and k” and you forget to double k:s. My name should be pronounced Juhapekka with “completely non-aspirated j and p and k” and with “double k” kk. It’s Juhapekka, not Jhuhaphekha! And of course I don’t mind if you pronounce my name as you pronounce it but just for curiosity.

I try to apply your advice into practice and to let my pronunciation simply flow but it’s easier said than done.

Hi Vaison,

Yes, it’s often the case that something you just couldn’t pronounce a while ago becomes second nature later on when you put a lot of effort into improving your pronunciation!

Thanks for commenting!

Regards,

Robby

Maybe I didn’t explain my problem clearly enough in my original comment and therefore you didn’t understand the seriousness of my pronunciation problem fully but your video helped me anyway. By quote that is in your blog post above I meant that when I (and other Finns as well) try to pronounce English words that contains schwa it’s very difficult to pronounce some of these kind of words correctly although we’d know very well that syllables with schwa are pronounced as unstressed. Good example of those kind of difficult words is the word “hamburger”, for example. Its pronunciation is ‘hæmbərgər but when pronounced by Finn it becomes easily ‘hæm’bör’gör which sounds completely wrong, of course. In fact, it’s possible to get almost all the sounds wrongly: ‘häm’pör’kör. This is possible because there isn’t necessarily clear distinction between p and b or between k and g in Finnish and Finnish r is always strongly rolled r and furthermore Finnish p and k are completely non-aspirated. Non-aspiration in this context means that when Finn hears ‘hæmbərgər he actually hears it as ‘hæmbhərghər. Personally I don’t have much problems with English b and g anymore but English speakers can disagree with me because I don’t make as clear distinction between p and b and k and g as native English speakers. I’m making this pronunciation mistake with schwa almost all the time, especially in some words, but it’s not as bad as it was years ago but it’s still too bad. Even though I know really well that syllables with schwa are unstressed in every word I easily kind of pronounce them as stressed. The same goes with the word “about” which is pronounced ə’baʊt but if I’m not careful it becomes ‘öbaʊt (note that the place of apostrophe changed and so the stress and the intonation changed as well). Your advice to imagine that schwa isn’t even there but still know it’s kinda there: ‘baʊt ə’baʊt helped me but I’m afraid that if I don’t pay particular attention I pronounce it wrongly. Hopefully practice makes the master also in this case. Some people can say that this schwa-pronunciation problem isn’t so serious but I think it is because schwa is very common sound in English and when you get schwa wrongly also the intonation and stressed syllables of words change. I don’t know exactly why but anyway this problem is like some kind of “bad magic”.

Even though schwa [ə] and “Finnish ö” are somewhat similar and the only differences between “schwa [ə]” and “Finnish ö [ø̞]” are the roundness of lips (schwa is obviously unrounded and relaxed) and frontness (schwa is central and Finnish ö is front) according to IPA vowel chart, there is still other differences that I can’t explain but the main difference is that schwa is very weak and “Finnish ö” is strong if it’s artificially in English words (though it’s not necessarily strong or stressed at all in Finnish because Finnish is quite stress-free language but it’s different story altogether). That’s why it’s maybe much better that I forget “Finnish ö” completely when pronouncing schwa and I don’t try to equate schwa to it at all and I simply perceive schwa as its own unique different sound although it’s difficult. But anyway your video helped me and I realized better why I couldn’t pronounce words with schwa correctly. I think it was partly because of I didn’t relax my mouth sufficiently (It’s somewhat paradoxical that I have problems to pronounce schwa correctly because schwa is “relaxed sound” and it should be easy to pronounce “relaxed sounds” because it doesn’t require almost any effort!) and partly because of I read that schwa doesn’t have exact and standard pronunciation and partly because of I didn’t realize properly that probably the best way to pronounce schwa is to imagine that it’s not even there and I didn’t know how to apply this advice into practice and because of other reasons and you partly mentioned some of them in your video and in your blog post but I don’t elaborate this issue more because I’m afraid I’m making this issue too complicated. Hopefully I’m getting at least slightly better at pronouncing certain English words as time goes by.

Speaking of Finnish ö and German ö after research I finally found corresponding IPA symbols and Finnish ö is probably mid front rounded vowel ø̞ in IPA and close-mid front rounded vowel ø (“Danish ö”) doesn’t represent Finnish ö at all although many resources recommend incorrectly it. In my opinion, “Danish ö” ø is somewhere between “Finnish y” (don’t exist in English but is somewhat similar to “German ü”) and “Finnish ö” and I think that Finns can hear “Danish ö” ø as “Finnish y”, which is obviously
completely different sound, if they don’t listen carefully. And I’m not sure what kind of sound “German ö” exactly is but it probably depends on German region where a speaker is coming from but according to Wikipedia it can be either mid or close-mid front rounded vowel or something nearly similar. I’m not sure at all how to describe these differences correctly from the point of view of linguistics but for my ears “German ö” is softer, milder and weaker ö-sound than “Finnish ö”. Corresponding articles in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_front_rounded_vowel , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_front_rounded_vowel and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-central_vowel .

And speaking of analyzing, I know how detrimental analyzing is for fluency and for overall pronunciation but my university studies encourage me to analyze but I try to keep my analyzing mode and my non-analyzing mode separate and I try to avoid getting bogged down on individual sounds too much.