When American visitors ask for directions to this city they nearly always ask for “Mel-born” and clearly articulate both syllables. The first syllable, “Mel” is stressed and the second syllable is unstressed and pronounced more like ‘buhn’. Similarly, the word Melbourne: Australians tend to say ‘Melbuhn’. The first syllable is stressed and we clearly articulate the ‘lem’, however the second syllable is unstressed and we pronounce it more like ‘uhn’, giving us ‘lemuhn’. the neutral mid-central vowel sound of most unstressed syllables in English: the sound represented by a in ago, e in agent, i in sanity, etc. To demonstrate the effect of the schwa, say the word ‘lemon’ and listen carefully. The schwa can also be influenced by accent. The unstressed syllable also contains a vowel however its pronunciation is weak and the vowel not clear – this is the schwa. We call this the stressed syllable and the vowel is clearly articulated. In multisyllablic words, one syllable usually gets greater emphasis than the others. The schwa is more prevalent in multisyllabic words but it is present in one syllable words such as ‘a’ and ‘the’. Brought to you by the creators of Sound Waves, The Great Australian Schwa helps you understand and identify the schwa (or //) sound through a clever Aussie.

The schwa is an unaccented syllable or as Louisa Moats describes it, “a vowel with the stuffing taken out”. The schwa is the most commo n vowel sound in the English language – it accounts for 20% of all vowels spoken, but is the one that teachers usually know least about. Teachers of reading must be aware of the schwa.

What is a schwa