Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (/ʃwɑː/ shwah, rarely /ʃwɔː/ shwaw or /ʃvɑː/ shvah;[1] sometimes spelled shwa)[2] is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol ⟨ə⟩, placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it usually represents the mid central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded), produced when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, such as the vowel sound of the ⟨a⟩ in the English word about.
This article is about the sound(s) referred to as schwa. For other uses, see Schwa (disambiguation).Schwa
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The name schwa and the symbol ⟨ə⟩ may be used for some other unstressed and toneless neutral vowels, not necessarily mid central, as it is often used to represent reduced vowels in general.[3] It also has been historically used to describe a canonical phonetic range covering a vast central area from near-close [ɪ̈] to near-open [ɐ]. [4]
In English, /ə/ is traditionally treated as a weak vowel that may occur only in unstressed syllables, but in accents with the STRUT–COMMA merger, such as Welsh English, some higher-prestige Northern England English, and some General American, it is merged with /ʌ/ and so /ə/ may then be considered to occur in stressed syllables.[5]
In Albanian, Romanian, Slovene, Balearic Catalan, Mandarin and Afrikaans, schwa can occur in stressed or unstressed syllables.
A similar sound is the short French unaccented ⟨e⟩, which is rounded and less central, more like an open-mid or close-mid front rounded vowel.
Sometimes, the term schwa can be used for any epenthetic vowel. Across languages, schwa vowels are commonly deleted in some instances such as in Hindi, North American English, French and Modern Hebrew. In phonology, syncope is the process of deleting unstressed sounds, particularly unstressed vowels such as schwa.
Etymology[edit]
The term schwa was introduced by German linguists in the 19th century from the Hebrew shva (שְׁוָא IPA: [ʃva], classical pronunciation: shəwāʼ [ʃəwɔː]), the name of the niqqud sign used to indicate the phoneme. It was first used in English texts in the early 1890s.[6][7]
The symbol ⟨ə⟩ was used first by Johann Andreas Schmeller for the reduced vowel at the end of the German language term Gabe. Alexander John Ellis, in his Palaeotype alphabet, used it for the similar English sound in but /bʌt/. The symbol is an ⟨e⟩ rotated by 180 degrees. A subscript small schwa (in Unicode as U+2094 ₔ LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER SCHWA) is used in phonetic transcription of Indo-European languages.[8]
Examples from other languages[edit]
Albanian[edit]
In Albanian, schwa is represented by the letter ⟨ë⟩, which is also one of the letters of the Albanian alphabet, coming right after the letter ⟨e⟩. It can be stressed like in words i ëmbël /i əmbəl/ and ëndërr /əndər/ ('sweet' and 'dream', respectively).
Caucasian languages[edit]
Many Caucasian languages and some Uralic languages (like Komi) also use phonemic schwa and allow schwas to be stressed. In Armenian, schwa is represented by the letter ⟨ը⟩ (capital ⟨Ը⟩). It is occasionally word-initial but usually word-final, as a form of the definite article. Unwritten schwa sounds are also inserted to split initial consonant clusters; for example, ճնճղուկ (čnčłuk) [t͡ʃənt͡ʃəˈʁuk] 'sparrow'. In the Azerbaijani alphabet, the schwa character ⟨ə⟩ is used, but to represent the /æ/ sound.
Germanic languages[edit]
In Dutch, the digraph ⟨ij⟩ in the suffix -lijk /lək/, as in waarschijnlijk /ʋaːrˈsxɛinlək/ ('probably'), is pronounced as a schwa, but the independent word lijk is never a schwa. The article een ('a' or 'an') is pronounced using the schwa, /ən/, and the number een ('one') is pronounced /eːn/ and so it is also written as één. Also, if an ⟨e⟩ falls in the ultimate (or penultimate) place before a consonant in Dutch words and is unstressed, it may become a schwa in some accents, as in the verb ending -en (lopen) and the diminutive suffix -tje(s) (tafeltje(s)).
In German, schwa is represented by the letter ⟨e⟩ and occurs only in unstressed syllables, as in gegessene. The vowel alternates freely with syllabic consonants /l, m, n/, as in Segel [ˈzeːgəl – ˈzeːglˌ] 'sail'. It also alternates with its absence, as in Segel 'sail' – Segl-er 'sailor'.[12] Finally, it may be dropped for rhythmical and other stylistic reasons as in Aug' um Auge, Zahn um Zahn 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'.
Schwa is not native to Bavarian dialects of German, which are spoken in Southern Germany and Austria. Vowels that are realized as schwa in Standard German change to /-e/, /-ɐ/, or /-ɛ/.
In Norwegian, the schwa is often found in the last syllable of definite masculine nouns, as in mannen [ˈmɑ̀nːn̩, ˈmɑ̀nːən] ('the man'), as well as in infinitive verbs like bite [ˈbîːtə] ('bite').
Schwa is normally represented in Yiddish by the Hebrew letter ⟨ע⟩ (Ayin) and, as in German, occurs only in unstressed syllables, as in געפֿילטע פֿיש (gefilte fish) /ɡəˈfɪltə fɪʃ/ ('stuffed fish'). In certain pronunciations of words derived from Hebrew, which retain their original orthography but have undergone significant phonological change, schwa may be represented by another letter, as in רבי (rebe) /ˈrɛbə/ ('rabbi'), or by no letter at all, as in שבת (shabes) [ˈʃa.bəs] ('Shabbat').
Odia, Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages[edit]
The schwa is an important feature of the Odia language which seen in the script is the retention of inherent vowel in consonants, also known as schwa, at both medial and final positions making it the only Indo Aryanic language aong with Sanskrit(Sanskrita) which has all the words ending with a vowel, similar to the European language of Italian which has the same feature. This absence of schwa deletion, which is also seen in Sanskrit, marks it from the rest of modern Indo-Aryan languages and their equivalent usage in related Brahmic scripts. The absence of the inherent vowel in the consonant is marked by a virama or halanta sign below the consonant.
The inherent vowel in the Devanagari script, an abugida that is used to write Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit, is a schwa written ⟨अ⟩ either in isolation or word-initially. In most Sanskrit-based languages, the schwa ⟨अ⟩ is the implied vowel after every consonant and so it has no diacritic marks. For example, in Hindi, the character ⟨ क ⟩ is pronounced /kə/ without marking, but ⟨ के ⟩ is pronounced /ke/ (like "kay") with a marking.
Although the Devanagari script is used as a standard to write Modern Hindi, the schwa (/ə/, which is sometimes written as /ɑ/) implicit in each consonant of the script, is "obligatorily deleted" at the end of words and in certain other contexts.[13] The phenomenon has been termed the "schwa deletion rule" of Hindi.[13][14]