IPA reference · vowel
ə — mid central vowel
The most neutral vowel — tongue at rest in the middle of the mouth.
Also called: schwa
How to make the mid central vowel
Relax everything and voice. It requires no articulatory effort at all, which is why languages use it for unstressed syllables.
English reference points: about, sofa, the. If you speak English natively you already produce this sound — the work is recognising it and placing it where the target language wants it.
Languages that use it
| Language | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| English | banana | banana |
| Romanian | casă | house |
| Indonesian | emas | gold |
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for ə, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
In English the two are close; the difference is largely one of stress.
What this means for learners
It is the most common vowel in spoken English, and failing to reduce unstressed syllables to it is the biggest single cause of a "robotic" foreign accent. In Romanian, unusually, schwa can carry stress.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of ə attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ə make?
ə is the mid central vowel. The most neutral vowel — tongue at rest in the middle of the mouth. In English you can hear it in: about, sofa, the.
How do you pronounce ə?
Relax everything and voice. It requires no articulatory effort at all, which is why languages use it for unstressed syllables.
Which languages have the mid central vowel?
Among the languages covered here: English (banana, “banana”); Romanian (casă, “house”); Indonesian (emas, “gold”).
What is the difference between ə and ʌ?
In English the two are close; the difference is largely one of stress.