The Center for Confident American English Communication

This week I received many questions about the schwa vowel sound. Let me explain a few things about this KEY English vowel sound. In spoken American English the schwa (see the image above right) is the relaxed vowel sound that is frequently used for vowel sounds in unstressed syllables. The schwa sound is made with

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Both British English and American English have a vowel sound that you’ve probably never heard of. This sound is called the schwa sound.  It looks like this /ə/. Native English speakers use the reduced schwa sound to create rhythm in words and sentences. Even though most native and non native English speakers are not aware

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Good listening skills are one of the first steps to changing your accent! One key step in improving your accent is learning to notice American English speech sounds and patterns. For example: I typically find that my accent reduction clients are not aware of the schwa vowel sound. This is the reduced vowel sound found

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Over the holidays I noticed several people mispronouncing these words: worry courage world Notice that in each of these words the vowel occurs before an /r/. In the above situations the /r/ conditions the sound of the vowel causing it to sound like /ər/. In pronunciation books this feature of American English pronunciation is called

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When you are speaking American English it is very important for you to use syllable stress correctly. One reason is because English has many heteronyms. Heteronyms are two words that are spelled identically. The way the words are pronounced determines their meaning. One good example of this is the word: ADDRESS. When you say the

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Non-native English speakers think that they should pronounce each word, sound and syllable clearly and distinctly but that’s not how spoken English works. Americans use reduced vowels and speech when they talk. They do not say every sound and syllable clearly and distinctly. Look at the words in the careful speech column below. If you

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The schwa + r sound /ɚ/ is frequently a confusing feature of American English pronunciation. In many situations when a vowel is followed by an /r/, only the /r/ sound is heard. The vowel sound isn’t really heard at all! This is called the schwa + r /ɚ/. The letter combinations or, er, ur &

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Linguistic research indicates that the most common sound in spoken English is the schwa vowel sound. This is because native English speakers pronounce the vowels in most reduced syllables with the schwa sound. The phonetic symbol for schwa is /ə/. Here is an example. When I say my name, Susan, the first syllable is stressed so

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This week many people have emailed to ask about the English schwa vowel sound. This vowel sound is found in both American and British English and it is the most common sound in the English language. The best place to learn about the schwa is here on the BBC website. Be sure to view the

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One of the most notable features of spoken English is its rhythm. Native English speakers alternate between using stressed and unstressed syllables in words and sentences. They do not pronounce all words and syllables with the same emphasis. One way that non-native English speakers can improve their accent is to learn to use the rhythms

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