What is the ‘schwa’?

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.