Talk:2907: Schwa

In what crazy dialect do these all use the same 1 vowel? 172.68.210.73 22:10, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I can think of several. I was immediately reminded of Lucy Porter's Hull accent (some examples, including videos/audio, here), but I can also think of New Zealand (more 'i'ish vowels, at least stereotypically), South African (down a couple of tones from that), and a number of state-side accents that conceivably are what Randall's drawing upon. [...as ninjaed, below, by 172.71.166.190 at 22:30]

My own accent (when given its full reign) actually tends to be consonant-light ("o'er" for "over", such that my vowels tend to be two or three separate tones in a row), so it doesn't work so well. But if I shift my focus to try to impersonate people from ten miles to the north (or a dozen or so miles east) from where I grew up then I can actually get quite close to 'perfect monovowelism' (still suppressing the consonants!). 172.69.79.139 22:32, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

All of them? I had to read the explanation to get what constitutes a schwa, but then I read the comic again, and yeah, they're all roughly the same sound, in the average North American accent anyway. Only exception is the word "A", which people might often pronounce like the letter "A", which of course isn't a schwa, :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Personally I pronounce those pretty much all the same (I live in Boston like Randall but don't have an actual Boston accent) --172.71.166.190 22:30, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I didn't think it was considered schwa when stressed as in "up" and "love". But my dictionary has a schwa in its pronunciation guide for both, so I guess I was wrong. But this basically means the usual "short U" pronunciation is schwa. Barmar (talk) 22:59, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Some dialects split the vowel at the end of "comma" from the vowel in "strut," but most North American dialects don't. So in pronouncing dictionaries, you will sometimes see the strut vowel written ʌ and the comma vowel written ə even though they might be exactly the same in your accent. In vowels that split comma and strut, schwa is rarely stressed, but that's not a rule. This is sometimes confused by American teachers, who try to explain why they see two different symbols for the same sound. But they really are different sounds, and Americans just don't use /ʌ/ at all. EebstertheGreat (talk) 02:50, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This all works in a generically american accent, except for the i vowel in onion, which cannot be schwa-ified in any english accent I've ever heard. [[Special:Contributions/ 172.69.34.171|172.69.34.171]] 23:27, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Depends. Wiktionary says /ˈʌn.jən/ (any particular places?) or /ˈʌŋ.jɪn/ (Canada) (and an obsolete version that I'd imagine the Kiwis to use).

If the /j/ isn't considered a vowel then you could definitely justify something like "un-yun" or "ern-yern" or even "in-yin" (amongst various other like-vowel versions)...

If you do the /j*n/ more as in /ˈi.ɑn/, /ˈeɪ.ɑn/, /ˈiː.ən/, /ˈiː.ɒn/ or /ˈeɪ.ɒn/ then clearly you can't switch to "uhn-uh-uhn" quite so easily. 162.158.74.69 23:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It says every vowel SOUND, which is different than "how each vowel sounds". The sound of that I is a Y. The O following it indeed uses the schwa. :) That's my guess, anyway, I don't know these pronunciation things that deeply. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't read the words "love cult" without thinking of DHMIS 3. Trogdor147 (talk) 00:10, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

If someone actually read this conversation to me using only schwa, I don't think I'd understand it. I usually consider myself a fluent English speaker, but my native language - Polish - doesm't have this vovel at all. 162.158.103.231 07:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think for us non-native speakers this is quite hard to replicate. I had to read the sentences out loud several times before I heard it. The standard British English I learned at school 35 years ago tends to have less Schwas in it, I guess. In German we do have some Schwas, mainly towards the end of words, but I don't think it is possible to construct whole sentence without any other vowels. --162.158.155.157 07:56, 16 March 2024 (UTC)