Pronunciation

Information about ‘schwa’

For phonemes making the 'uh' sound

Schwa is the name for the most common sound in English. It is the unstressed sound that we find in many words; it makes an ‘uh’ sound, which varies according to accent. The phonemic symbol for the schwa sound is ə. Schwa can be represented in writing by all five vowels, and by a number of digraphs and trigraphs such as ‘er’, ‘ou’, ‘or’ and ‘our’.

For information regarding the ‘schwa’ sound, please refer to our comprehensive blog post.