Special education of the republic of uzbekistan

e.g. Morocco, Japan, giraffe, Felicity

• 
  f ollowing main stress (sometimes twice in words);
  

e.g. Peter, Amazon, Anthony

• 
  between secondary and primary stress
  

e.g. cigarette, Wolverhampton

• 
  as an even shorter alternative to short [ɪ] in fast versions of certain words;
  

e.g. Janet, Jemima, elephant

Schwa is not just short, it is the shortest possible vowel in English.

Words without schwa Words with schwa

sport = sp:t support = sə'p:t

claps = klæps collapse = kə'læps

prayed = preɪd parade = pə'reɪd

scum = skm succumb = sə'km

sliver = 'slaɪvə saliva = sə'laɪvə

train = treɪn terrain = tə'reɪn

blow = bləu below = bə'ləu

cress = kres caress = kə'res

plight = plaɪt polite = pə'laɪt

Clyde = klaɪd collide = kə'laɪd

hungry = 'hŋɡrɪ Hungary = 'hŋɡərɪ

Schwa is found not only in lexical items (nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs). It is regularly found in common, weakly-stressed grammatical items, especially prepositions, articles, auxiliary verbs and pronouns.

Ω

Listen to the following limericks. Your tasks are:

1. 
   hit the main stressed syllables
   
2. 
   watch out for the weak syllables in the names; a lot of them start with an unstressed syllable containing schwa;
   

We travelled to Venice then on to Verona

to test a Fiesta with only one owner.

We drove through the night to a village near Brussels

to choose lots of booze and eat plenty of mussels.

We later decided to head off to Spain

via France for a chance to drink lots of champagne.

But after a week of good living and booze

we agreed that we’d need to rest up in Toulouse.

Then we drove to Madrid before heading to Lisbon

to meet our friend Pete who’d just flown in from Brisbane.

We drove farther south to a town near Granada

to find lots of wine to replenish the larder,

and then spent a week just outside Algeciras,

but folk that we spoke to refused to come near us.

We stayed for a while in the town of Pamplona

where Pete walked the street (he’s a bit of a loner)

We drove fairly fast to a hotel in Cannes

where we tried to confide our affairs to a man,

who gave us some goods to deliver in Rome

for a fee we’d not see until safely back home.

We sailed down to Malta to stay in Valetta

but a fax sent from Sfax made us think that we’d better,

cross over to Tunis then drive to Algiers

to speak to a Greek I had known for some years.

We drove through Morocco to reach Casablanca

to discuss, without fuss, our affairs with a banker.

Then headed back north, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar

but passed through so fast we were starting to falter,

and round about then I began to remember

I had to meet Dad on the tenth of September.

We sold the Fiesta and loaded a plane

with some gear from Tangier then we got on a train,

which roared through the night till it reached Santander

where we stayed one more day just to breath in the air,

then a boat brought us back to our own native shores.

So that was my holiday, how about yours?