<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi.<br class=""><div><br class=""></div><div>On Jul 1, 2018, at 11:34 PM, Toby Katz via Mesorah <<a href="mailto:mesorah@lists.aishdas.org" class="">mesorah@lists.aishdas.org</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">In modern English dictionaries' pronunciation guides, there is a vowel called a "schwa" that is represented as an upside-down letter "e." Any vowel in an /unstressed/ syllable in a word -- a, e, i, o, or u -- may be pronounced as a schwa. </span></blockquote><br class=""></div><div>I learned about the schwa back in first grade (we might've used "shwa"). The dictionary we kids used had a mini-guide to pronunciation printed at the bottom of each page (e.g., ā [macron a] as in "able", <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">ă</span> [breve a] as in "at", and so forth). They said that schwa was pronounced as "e" in "father" and "i" in "pencil" (they gave examples for "a", "o", and "u", but I don't remember what they were).</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Wikipedia has a nice article about the schwa, giving the following pronunciation examples, along with their IPA transcriptions:</div><div><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 width=%225%22 height=%2213%22%3E %3Ccircle cx=%222.5%22 cy=%229.5%22 r=%222.5%22 fill=%22%2300528c%22/%3E %3C/svg%3E"); color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">'a', as in <i class="">about</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[əˈbaʊt]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">'e', as in <i class="">taken</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[ˈtʰeɪkən]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">'i', as in <i class="">pencil</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[ˈpʰɛnsəl]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">'o', as in <i class="">memory</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[ˈmɛməri]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">'u', as in <i class="">supply</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[səˈplaɪ]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">'y', as in <i class="">sibyl</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[ˈsɪbəl]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">various combinations of letters, such as 'ai' in <i class="">mountain</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[ˈmaʊntən]</span></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;" class="">unwritten, as in <i class="">rhythm</i> <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">[ˈɹɪðəm]</span></li></ul><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><div>("IPA" is "International Phonetic Alphabet", not "India Pale Ale".) </div><div><br class=""></div><div>The name "schwa" is a German transliteration of the Hebrew word שוא, which explains the "w".</div><br class=""><div class="">
Art Werschulz<br class=""><a href="mailto:agw@comcast.net" class="">agw@comcast.net</a><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">
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