Ə: The Most Common Vowel in English

"Schwa" is the most common vowel in English. Every English speaker uses it, all the time, but most people have never heard of it. •
Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen's podcast Lingthusiasm is at

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Graphics by William Marler:
Audio mix by Graham Haerther:

REFERENCES:
Trask, R. (1997). A student's dictionary of language and linguistics. London : New York: Arnold ; Distributed by St. Martin's Press.
Lacabex, E., & Gallardo-del-Puerto, F. (2018). Explicit phonetic instruction vs. implicit attention to native exposure: phonological awareness of English schwa in CLIL, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (published online ahead of print).

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