5 Quick Facts about Schwa

Today, I’ll be sharing five quick facts about schwa.

This is a video series asked for by YOU! A few months ago, I sent out an email asking what phonics skills you’d like to know more about. Many responses came in, but the overwhelmingly top response was about schwa.

So, I’ve working through a video mini-series on schwa…and here we go!

Let’s go over five quick facts that will lay the foundation for learning more about schwa.

Watch my short video now.

Five Quick Facts about Schwa

1. Schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language.

Notice I didn’t say the most common vowel, but the most common vowel sound. Schwa is also the most misunderstood sound in the English language.

2. Schwa is a quick sound.

Schwa is so quick that you may not even realize it’s there. I believe it’s one of the reasons schwa is so misunderstood.

3. Schwa is a relaxed sound (similar to the short u sound in up) and is found in unstressed (or unaccented) syllables.

The English language is a language of rhythm set off by stressed and unstressed syllables. We will explore more about stressed and unstressed syllables later in this series, but for now, it’s enough to remember that schwa is found in unstressed syllables.

Three examples include the word nation, banana, and taken. I have marked the stressed syllable in each word with bold letters while the unstressed syllable or syllables in each word are underlined. The underlined vowels are where we have the unstressed schwa sound.

If you say the words, you’ll notice that the schwa sound is quick and a little difficult to distinguish. This is part of what makes schwa so tricky.

4. Schwa can be represented by any vowel and even several combinations of vowels.

This is yet another reason why schwa is hard to nail down.

Look at just this small list of words. Schwa is represented by every vowel including y as well as vowel combinations in the words captain, station, and famous. Again, the syllable containing schwa is quick and unaccented.

5. Schwa is represented in the dictionary by an upside-down e symbol.

One of the things I learned years ago in my undergraduate as voice major is that each sound in the English language (as well as other languages) has a symbol to represent it. The system is called the International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA for short). This upside-down e symbol represents schwa.

If you were to look up the word captain in the dictionary, it would look something like what you see in the image below. The first syllable is accented while the second syllable is not, and you can see the schwa represented by its symbol there as the upside-down e that I’ve marked in red.

If you were to look up the word away in the dictionary, it would look something like what you see in the image above. Away has an unaccented first syllable. We see the schwa symbol there marked in red. The second syllable in away is the accented syllable. It doesn’t have the schwa symbol, but a symbol representing long a.

We’ll be exploring more about schwa in this series as well as finding stressed and unstressed syllables, so be sure to stay tuned!

More to Explore about Schwa:

Enjoy teaching schwa!
~Becky