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)

'Round these 'ere parts, you'd never say "A"-to-rhyme-with-"Hay" (except to stress "that isn't just a(y) good song but the(e) best song ever!", e.g.). Still confused, me, though when at my first ever French class at school, the teacher (with not far off the local accent) told us that 'un' and 'une' were "the words for 'uh'...". Which only became clear when she clarified "...like 'uh book', 'uh table', 'uh window'...". This was actually how we all spoke. (More or less... Ah din't spake quart ser m'tch lahk dat, wot wi' mi mam'n'dad bofe bin frum a cupla tarns ovver, f'witch ah gut uh rep f'beyin "posch". Ur mebbe 'twuz cuz mi mam whir uh titch'r, ser ah gut lurnt t' spake proppah?) 172.71.242.3 17:23, 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)

Plus, this "schwa is never stressed" mnemonic doesn't even make perfect predictions for dialects without the merger. I've heard that in undone /ʌnˈdʌn/, the unstressed vowel doesn't go to schwa. In the end, the IPA wasn't created just for English, and it only defines [ə] as a mid central vowel, not an unstressed one. Reduced vowels may often mid-centralize, but nothing says a language can't stress mid central vowels at other times, just like any other vowel quality can be stressed or unstressed. ~AgentMuffin 21:53, 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)

This dipthong has a consonant in it. What is going on? 172.69.65.182 12:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

"except for the i vowel in onion" IMHO, there is no 'i' in onion. UN-YUN. The Y acts more of a consonant. -Me (born of a Missouri mom and a Connecticut father, babbled in Colorado, schooled in Calif then New Jersey within hearing of South Philly, yo!) PRR (talk) 20:18, 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)

The /j/ sound commonly found in "onion" is not generally considered a vowel. As a test, try to put it between two consonants to make a complete syllable: first try to say /np/, and notice you have to add a schwa (neutral vowel), /nəp/; then try to say /nyp/, and you'll add that same extra vowel, /nyəp/. It's sometimes called a "semivowel", because it has some properties of a vowel and some of a consonant; or sometimes a "glide", because of the way it sets at the edge a syllable. - IMSoP (talk) 16:01, 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)

I’m american (boston area) but some of these vowels do sound different from others to me, although it still seems it would be clear and ok if they’re all said the same. 172.69.65.182 12:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Randall seems to have terminally confused the schwa [ǝ] with [ʌ] as in "cup". I've never seen such an incorrect xkcd. In the UK, the Manchester accent almost universally consists of [ǝ] and even they wouldn't be able to use [ǝ] for "onion" 172.69.223.163 13:04, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The explanation mentioned the strut–comma merger well before this comment. There's no need to jump to calling other dialects "incorrect". ~AgentMuffin 21:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe a better symbol could be used than an apostrophe in the explanation? It's difficult to read/spot, and the quote is surrounded in quotation marks, which makes it a little confusing. I'm not sure what though. --Mushrooms (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe an underscore? “D_gs c_s(_)n, th_ _n fr_m L_nd_n, r_ns _ B_mbl l_v c_lt.” - 16:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

It's a shame Schwa isn't pronounced with a schwa. Kev (talk) 16:47, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

For an example of where people mispronounce vowels for comic effect, here's a 40 year old and occasionally very impolite/politically incorrect BBC comedy which used people speaking in different accents as their conceit for different languages. So an englishman speaking very bad french comes across very like these XKCD characters https://youtu.be/ycqc0L4a2wQ?si=KO_qvZqMJH-3Gy1N&t=90 Kev (talk) 16:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is highly inconsistent both with my experience and the diction/IPA I studied in college as part of a vocal music education degree. The short U [ʌ] and schwa [ǝ] are different vowels, and the difference is most obvious (in words used in the strip) in "cousin" and "obstruction" which would sound ridiculous if you pronounced all the vowel sounds exactly the same. I would have failed an assignment I turned in marking this strip full of schwas. They're almost all [ʌ] except in those words and "a" and "of".